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November 2010

National Conference on IT for Rural & Agriculture Development

Date : 23-24 November 2010

Host: Indian Institute of Business Management, Patna

Organized by: Patna Chapter

For details contact: Prof. A K Nayak

National Conference on Theoretical Computer Science & Applications

Date : 25-26 Nov. 2010

Hosted by : B S Abdur Rahman Institute of Science and Technology

Organised by: CSI Chennai Chapter and B S Abdur Rahman Institute of Sc.

and Tech.

For details contact: Dr. K M Mehata, [email protected]

45th Annual Convention

Date : 25-27 Nov. 2010, Mumbai

Venue : Mumbai Host: CSI Mumbai Chapter

For details contact: www.csi-2010.org

December 2010

5th CSI National Conference on IT for Defence

Theme: Emerging Technologies in the Modern Battlefi eld

Date : 2-3, December, 2010

Host: CSI Bangalore Chapter

Organized by: SIG-IS, Div.IV

For details contact: [email protected], [email protected]

Tel.: 080-22862215, 2286046

Region-I Student Convention

Date : 4-5 December 2010

Hosted/Organized by: CSI Student Baanch at Graphic Era University, Dehradun

For details contact: Dr. Harish Kumar, [email protected], Dr. R.K.

Vyas, [email protected]

Summit on Cloud Computing and Green IT


Hosted and Organized by: CSI New Delhi Chapter

For details contact: [email protected], Cell : 9654298354

COMAD-2010 International Conference on Management of Data


Organized by: CSI Division II (Software), SIG-Data, Region VI and Nagpur

Chapter

For details contact: P S Deshpande, VNIT Nagpur

E-mail: [email protected]

National Conference on E-Governance & E-Society (NCEGOVS-2010)


Hosted by: Allahabad Chapter

For details contact: Mr. D K Dwivedi, [email protected]

Workshop on Java Androids & Web Technologies


Hosted by: Jaypee University of Engineering & Technology, Guna (MP)

Organised by: CSI and Jaypee University of Engineering & Technology,

Guna

For details contact: Dr. Shishir Kumar, [email protected]

National Conference on E-Governance & E-Society (NCEGOVS-2010)


Hosted by: Allahabad Chapter

For details contact: Mr. D.K. Dwivedi, [email protected]

ICoAC 2010: 2nd International Conference on Advanced Computing

Date: 14-16, Dec. 2010 at Chennai, India

Organised by: Dept. of Information Technology, Anna University Chennai,

MIT Campus and IEEE Madras Section and Supported by Computer Society

of India Div IV & Chennai Chapter, IEEE Computer Society, Madras Chapter,

Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) and University

Grants Commission (UGC)

For details contact: Dr. S. Thamarai Selvi, Professor, Dept. of Information

Technology, MIT Campus, Anna University Chennai, Chromepet,

Chennai 600044, India. Phone: 91-44-22516319 / 22516015. Email:

[email protected] OR Mr. H.R. Mohan, Chair Div IV at hrmohan.

[email protected] Website: www.annauniv.edu/icoac2010

ICSIP-2010: International Conference on Signal and Image Processing

Date : 15-17, Dec. 2010 at Chennai, India

Organized by: RMD College of Engineering and University of Mysore in

association with Computer Society of India Div IV & Chennai Chapter and

IEEE Computer Society, Madras Chapter

For details contact: Prof. Dr. R. M. Suresh, Chair – Programme Committee at

[email protected] or [email protected] OR Mr. H R Mohan, Chair

Div IV at [email protected] Website: www.rmd.ac.in/icsip2010/

Role of IT in National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA)


Hosted by: Tata Institute of Social Sciences

Organised by: CSI and Tata Institute of Social Sciences

For details contact: Prof. Bino Paul, [email protected]

Seminar on Knowledge Management

Date : 18th December 2010

Hosted by: Academic Staff College, VIT University

Organised by: CSI SIG-KM and CSI Vellore Chapter

For details contact: [email protected], [email protected]

January 2011ConfER-2011: The 4th National Conference on Education & Research

Date : 23-24 January, 2011

Hosted by: Shambhunath Institute of Engineering & Technology, Allahabad

Organized by: CSI Division V, Region-I and Allahabad Chapter

For details contact: Prof. J P Mishra

E-mail: [email protected]),

Mr. Zafar Aslam (e-mail: [email protected])

February 2011NCCSE-2011: Second National Conference on Computational Science and

Engg.

Date : 4-5, Feb 2011 at Kochi, India

Organized by: Department of Computer Science & CSI Student Branch

Rajagiri College of Social Sciences, Cochin In association with Computer

Society of India Div. IV on Communications and Cochin Chapter

For details contact: Dr. P. X. Joseph, Conference Convener, Prof. & HOD,

Department of Computer Science, Rajagiri College of Social Sciences.

Rajagiri P.O, Kalamassery, Cochin - 683104, Kerala, India. Phone: Ph: 0484-

2555564

Email: [email protected] or visit the website at: www.rajagiri.edu

CONSEG-2011 : International Conference on Software Engineering

Date : 17-19 February, 2011

Organized by: CSI Div. II (Software) and Bangalore Chapter

For details contact: Dr. Anirban Basu, [email protected]

Second International Conference on Emerging Applications of Information Technology (EAIT 2011)

Date : 18-20 February, 2011

Host by: Kolkata Chapter

For details contact: Mr. D P Sinha, [email protected]

March 201127th CSI National Student Convention

Date : 9-12, March 2011

Hosted by: ITM Gwalior

Organized by: CSI ITM Universe Student Branch and CSI Gwalior Chapter

For details contact: [email protected], [email protected],

[email protected]

M D Agrawal

Vice President & Chair, Conference Committee, CSI

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | NOVEMBER 2010 1

Volume No. 34 Issue No. 8 November 2010

President Prof. P [email protected]

Vice-PresidentMr. M D [email protected]

Hon. SecretaryProf. H R [email protected]

Hon. TreasurerMr. Saurabh H [email protected]

Immd. Past PresidentMr. S [email protected]

Regional Vice-Presidents

Mr. M P Goel (Region I)[email protected]

Dr. D P Mukherjee (Region II)[email protected]

Prof. S G Shah (Region III)[email protected]

Mr. Sanjay Mohapatra (Region IV)[email protected]

Dr. D B V Sarma (Region V)[email protected]

Mr. C G Sahasrabuddhe (Region VI)[email protected]

Mr. S Ramanathan (Region VII)[email protected]

Mr. Jayant Krishna (Region VIII)[email protected]

Division ChairpersonsDr. Deepak Shikarpur Division-I (Hardware)[email protected]

Dr. T V Gopal Division-II (Software)[email protected]

Dr. S Subramanian [email protected] (Applications)

Mr. H R Mohan Division-IV [email protected] (Communications)

Prof. Swarnalatha Rao Division-V [email protected] (Edu. & Research)

Nominations CommitteeDr. Shyam Sunder Agrawal

Prof. (Dr.) U K Singh

Dr. Suresh Chandra Bhatia

Publications Committee

ChairmanProf. S. V. [email protected]

Chief EditorDr. T V [email protected]

Director (Education)Wg. Cdr. M Murugesan (Retd.)[email protected]

Resident EditorMrs. Jayshree [email protected]

Executive SecretaryMr. Suchit [email protected]

Published by

Mr. Suchit GogwekarFor Computer Society of India

Executive Committee 2010-11/12 CONTENTS

Theme Section : Fuzzy Computing

04 Life with Fuzzy Logic and its Father

M M Sufyan Beg

06 Some Refl ections on the Birth and Evolution of Fuzzy Set Theory

Lotfi A. Zadeh

1 0 Decision Making under Risk and Uncertainty : Revisited

Vidyottama Jain and Ashok Deshpande

1 3 Industrial think tank’s approach towards Fuzzy Logic

Mohammad Saad Alam

1 5 Computing Linguistic Knowledge using Fuzzy Theory

Bindu Garg

1 7 Computing in a Fuzzy Environment

Apostolos Syropoulos

HR Column

20 Pragmatics of “Hire-Fire” in India

Hastha Krishnan

Ideas & Opinions

22 Teaching Information Systems: The Generation Gap

Nilay M Yajnik

Special Section

23 Welcome to CSI 2010

M D Agrawal

24 The CSI Annual Convention’2010 – Overview

Atanu Rakshit

26 CSI 2010 – Convention Programme

28 CSI-Nihilent e-Governance Awards 2009-10

Articles

29 Cloud computing-Resource management for effective E-governance

Savita Bhatnagar

35 Social Media Mega Trends

Hareesh Tibrewala

Departments

02 Community Talk

03 President’s Desk

37 Report on Divisional Conference on Mobile Computing (DCMC-2010)

39 SIG e-Governance – A Report

42 Workshop on “Software Testing – Tools and Practices in Industry”

46 ExecCom Transacts

CSI Topics

CSI Calendar 2010-11 (2nd Cover)

39 CSI AGM Notice

47 From CSI Chapters


COMMUNITY TALK

Human beings have a remarkable capability

to reason and make decisions in an environment

of uncertainty, imprecision, incompleteness of

information, and partiality of knowledge, truth

and class membership. The principal objective of

fuzzy logic is formalization / mechanization of this

capability.

The term “fuzzy logic” emerged in the

development of the theory of fuzzy sets by Lotfi Zadeh

during 1965. Fuzzy Logic is a superset of Boolean logic

dealing with the concept of partial truth -- truth values

between “completely true” and “completely false”.

Fuzzy logic and probability are different ways of

expressing uncertainty. While both fuzzy logic and

probability theory can be used to represent subjective

belief, fuzzy set theory uses the concept of fuzzy set

membership (i.e., how much a variable is in a set),

probability theory uses the concept of subjective

probability (i.e., how probable do I think that a variable

is in a set).

Lotfi Zadeh argues that fuzzy logic is different in

character from probability, and is not a replacement

for it. He fuzzifi ed probability to fuzzy probability and

also generalized it to what is called possibility theory.

A special article by Lotfi Zadeh is the highlight of the

theme section of this issue.

There are many misconceptions about fuzzy

logic. To begin with, fuzzy logic is not fuzzy. In large

measure, fuzzy logic is precise. Another source of

confusion is the duality of meaning of fuzzy logic. In

a narrow sense, fuzzy logic is a logical system. But in

much broader sense which is in dominant use today,

fuzzy logic is much more than a logical system. More

specifi cally, fuzzy logic has four principal facets:

1. The fuzzy-set-theoretic facet

2. The logical facet

3. The epistemic facet

4. The relational facet

Fuzzy logic in this broad sense serves mainly as

apparatus for fuzzy control, analysis of vagueness

in natural language and several other application

domains. It is one of the techniques of soft-computing,

i.e. computational methods tolerant to suboptimality

and impreciseness (vagueness) and giving quick,

simple and suffi ciently good solutions.

Fuzzy logic is symbolic logic with a comparative

notion of truth developed fully in the spirit of classical

logic (syntax, semantics, axiomatization, truth-

preserving deduction, completeness and so on; both

propositional and predicate logic). It is a branch of

many-valued logic based on the paradigm of inference

under vagueness.

“Fuzzy Logic is basically a multivalued logic that

allows intermediate values to be defi ned between

conventional evaluations like yes/no, true/false, black/

white, etc. Notions like rather warm or pretty cold

can be formulated mathematically and processed by

computers.”

– Bauer et al

The 1980s saw a whole wave of practical

applications of fuzzy theory, mainly in the fi eld of

process control, with Japan as pioneer. In the ‘90s

there has been a fl ood of applications to household

electrical appliances, and “fuzzy” has become a

high-tech buzz-word in Japan. Over the past several

decades, Fuzzy Logic has been applied in various

domains like Medicine, Finances, Geography,

Philosophy, Ecology, Agricultural Processes, Water

Treatment, Baggage Handling at Denver International

Airport, Remote Sensing, Handwriting Recognition,

Nuclear Science, Stock Market and Weather

Forecasting.

Computing with Words (CW) is a methodology

in which words are used in place of numbers for

computing and reasoning. Fuzzy logic plays a pivotal

role in CW and vice-versa. Fuzzy logic starts with

and builds on a set of user-supplied human language

rules. The fuzzy systems convert these rules to their

mathematical equivalents. This simplifi es the job of

the system designer and the computer, and results

in much more accurate representations of the way

systems behave in the real world.

Additional benefi ts of fuzzy logic include its

simplicity and its fl exibility. Fuzzy logic can handle

problems with imprecise and incomplete data, and it

can model nonlinear functions of arbitrary complexity.

“If you don’t have a good plant model, or if the

system is changing, then fuzzy will produce a better

solution than conventional control techniques”

– Bob Varley, Senior Systems Engineer at Harris Corp.,

an Aerospace Company in Palm Bay, Florida.

I must thank Dr. Sufyan Beg for the thoughtful

selection of articles on “Fuzzy Computing”. We are

thankful to Prof. Lotfi Zadeh, the father of “Fuzzy

Computing” for a visionary article on the theme

specially written for this issue.

The endeavor of the “CSI Communications

(CSIC)” team has been to make this issue a special

one for the 45th National Convention of CSI scheduled

to be held during 25 – 27 November 2010 at Mumbai.

On behalf of the CSIC team, I extend a warm welcome

to all the delegates of the CSI 2010.

Dr. Gopal T V

Hon. Chief Editor

[email protected]

“My crystal ball is fuzzy”- Lotfi Zadeh (inventor of Fuzzy Logic, when asked to predict the future)

to CSI 2010Mumbai


From : [email protected]

Subject : President’s Desk

Date : 1st November, 2010

Dear Affectionate Members of CSI Family,

In our attempts to improve the services to our members at

large, we are able to install the latest Equipment at our offi ces

at Chennai Educational HQ and Mumbai. We could establish the

professional structures in the services of members. Extra human

resources could also be recruited.

HQ Infrastructure @ Mumbai:

The offi ce space at Mumbai is not suffi cient and it has become essential

to look for alternatives. A lot of effort is put in by the OBs, ExecCom

members and offi ce staff during the past few months, to fi nd out suitable

place for our Mumbai HQ offi ce. I am happy to inform you that we are

successful, in getting allotted about 500 Sq. meter of space in the 4th

Floor of Samruddhi Venture Park Bldg of MIDC, Govt. of Maharastra, in

Andheri (East) for about 95 years ownership registration. We would

like to complete all the formalities soon and make our new offi ce of HQ

to function in the NEW YEAR. I am grateful to Shri Raj Saraf, Dr. Vijay

Bhatkar, Shri S. Mahalingam, Shri M. D. Agrawal, Shri Saurabh Sonawala,

Prof. H. R. Viswakarma, Shri Mohan R. Datar, Shri Suchit Gogwekar &

our Staff for working together as an excellent team and the ExecCom

members for the support in getting the deal fi nalized.

Elders’ day: Ist October:

Hyderabad chapter arranged Prof. R. Narasimhan Memorial “ CSI Hall of

Fame” Lecture by Prof. D.V.R. Vithal, befi tting the day by remembering

simple living, high thinking Legend Prof. Narasimhan who has been a

model Professional(24/7). An Industry- Academic knowledge sharing

meet has been arranged on that day, by Hyderabad Chapter, by inviting

all the Student Counselors of CSI Region V with student representatives

and Industry representatives. This meet has helped in bringing together

Industry and Academic institutions on their attempts to improve the

employability of the youth and in understanding the human resources

requirement in the Industry. This model could be repeated in each region

by regional/ state coordinators. I am grateful to the Chairman Shri Raju

Kanchibhotla, Vice chairman Prof I. L. Narasimha Rao and Managing

Committee of Hyderabad Chapter for arranging this useful event while

making arrangements for the ExecCom meeting, which was held on the

following day at Hyderabad.

MOU between the Institution of Engineers( India) and CSI.

An MOU between IEI and CSI could be signed on 8th October 2010 at

the Institution of Engineers (India), 8 Ghokhale Road, Kolkata-700020.

This MOU enables the members of both the societies to organize

events together, exchange the technical expertise and also to share the

infrastructure facilities for common programs. Brig. SVS Chowdhry, Past

President of CSI and the Institute of Engineers, deserves my Salute for

his relentless efforts in bringing together both CSI and IEI. It is he, who

could travel from Delhi to Kolkata for facilitating the process of MOU.

We are grateful to Er. Madan Lal, President, Maj. Gen. R. K. Sanan, VSM

(Retd.), Secretary & Director General of the Institution of Engineers and

their colleagues in the Institution of Engineers for their support and for

the courtesies extended to the CSI team headed by the President with

the Kolkata Chapter Managing Committee and Senior members of CSI.

I am sure many chapters would utilize this MOU to plan more activities

for our members.

E-Governance Workshop by the CSI Regional Research

Centre@ Kolkata

Our attempts to promote research have yielded good results. Dr. (Mrs.)

Jayasri Chaudhuri, Hon. Research Director, could successfully organize a

National workshop on e-Governance during October 8-9, 2010 with the

help of Kolkata Chapter. More than 16 research accomplishments have

been presented and discussed during the two days. Dr. Debesh Das,

Minister of ICT, West Bengal inaugurated the event while Ajoy Roy VC,

BESU and Dr. N. Vijayaditya, former DG, NIC were the key note speakers.

SEARCC International Schools Software Competitions: SISSC-

2010:

To foster the development of Computer competence among young

people in the South East Region of the world, SEARCC instituted a

software competition which is open to school students, who are not

more than 18 years of age. The competition also provides opportunities

for the young people to acquire better awareness of the culture, Life-

Style and aspirations of each other’s country, there by contributing to

better understanding in relationships for future generations.

SEARCC Secretary General: Mr. Yasa Karunaratne had requested CSI

to host this event in India during 2010 while the SEARCC conference

was planned at Brisbane. CSI ExecCom has accepted the request and

considered the proposal of RMD Engineering College to conduct the

competitions.

Australia, India, New Zealand, Srilanka and ROC: Taiwan fi elded their

teams for the competitions that were held during 21-25 October 2010.

RMK International School has been the venue for accommodating

the team members, chaperons and judges of the competitions. RMD

Engineering College provided the logistics for arranging competitions It

has been an exceptionally organized Mission by the management of RMD

and RMK group in institutions to receive the teams, chaperons, judges

at different timings, arranging AC accommodation, security, providing

computing and internet facilities, cultural exchange meets, Sight seeing,

Extending recreation- sports-go-carting, swimming and in taking care of

the variety requirements of food and health care with affectionate Indian

Hospitality in a festive environment at every location of the campus.

The management headed by Shri Muniratnam Naidu deserves our

Pranam for sponsoring the event logistics. And the young Director Shri

Pradeepbhai is remembered by all of us for providing excellent boarding

and lodging facilities to all of us in the RMK International School. Our CSI

stalwarts: Shri HR Mohan, Dr. O. S. Srivastav, Prof. K. Rajasekhararao

and Prof. P Kumar have been in the board of judges. Shri Ramasamy

excelled as event chair while Prof. Suresh has exceptionally organized

the event with minute to minute monitoring. Commander Murugesan,

Mr. Bhuvaneswaran, Mr. Gyana Sekhar, Mr Natarajan, Mr Yogendar and

our education Directorate had taken care of intrinsic requirements and

interfaced the teams through out the event, This is an event that one can

site an example of “unlimited voluntary strength” to achieve the target

as gel team. We are thankful to Mr. Yasa Karunaratne for attending and

encouraging the event in India.

F.C. Kohli Challenge Trophy:

A trophy is instituted by CSI on the name of the father of SEARCC

movement Dr. F. C. Kohli for presenting to the winning team of SEARCC

International Schools’ Software Competition. This year, the trophy has

been bagged by ROC: Taiwan while Srilanka and New Zealand stood at

second and third positions respectively.

Swarnim Gujarat & CSI-2011

While Gujarat is celebrating the Golden jubilee celebrations of the

formation of Gujarat State, our CSI family wanted to encourage the

celebrations by granting Annual convention of CSI in Gujarat. Thus,

Ahmedabad Chapter of CSI would host the CSI-2011 in Ahmedabad.

Kolkata Chapter has kindly opted to host the CSI-2012.

Prof. P ThrimurthyPresident, Computer Society of India

PRESIDENT ’S DESK

4CSI COMMUNICATIONS | NOVEMBER 2010

Life with Fuzzy Logic and its FatherM M Sufyan Beg

Professor and Head, Department of Computer Engineering, Jamia Millia Islamia (A Central University)

New Delhi – 110025 (India). Email: [email protected]

GUEST EDITORIAL

Farewell Party hosted by Prof. L A

Zadeh (fourth from left) and other

BISC scholars for the Guest Editor,

Prof. M M Sufyan Beg (third from left),

on completion of his Fellowship at UC

Berkeley in 2005-06.

Life was not the same before 1965, because it

took a revolutionary to put forth his path breaking idea

in that year. It was in that very year that Fuzzy Theory

took birth to an illustrious father in Lotfi Ahmed

Zadeh. It took the world a while to even fathom this

novel idea, leave alone digesting it. It was a blunder on

the part of the world to ignore these ground-breaking

ideas for quite a while. It was only when people

started applying his theory of Fuzzy Logic to practical

applications that the potential of this theory started

dawning on them.

In the year 2002, when I was a Ph.D. candidate

at IIT Delhi, I happened to go to USA to present

three of my research papers in the Joint Conference

on Information Sciences (JCIS 2002). I was

overwhelmed to see Prof. Zadeh walking into my

session and listening to all three papers of mine very

patiently and attentively. That day I realized what

makes great people great. After having crossed 80

years of age, he was still listening to a novice in the

fi eld so very diligently.

In the 40th year of the birth of Fuzzy Logic, I got

very lucky to join Prof. Zadeh’s group at the University

of California at Berkeley as a Postdoctoral scholar. The

year of 2005-06 that I spent there, gave me ample

opportunity to see Prof. Zadeh from very close. He

won’t hesitate to open the doors for you. He won’t shy

from offering you the lunch every time you go to see

him. He personally took me to the meeting of all the

faculty members of his Department and introduced

me publicly there. He would always be concerned

about the well being of all his sub-ordinates. While

there, I experienced back pain once. He was the fi rst

to email me the following:

Dear Mirza,

I regret to hear that you are experiencing back pain.

Almost everybody has this problem. Rest is the best cure.

Keep in touch.

Warm regards.

Lotfi

He would always inquire the state of my native

country, India. He would go on to the extent of

inquiring about the state of “Moslems” (as he used to

pronounce) in India. He was concerned about one and

all. I could very clearly see the gentleman in him from

very close quarters.

No wonder a great man has given a great theory

to the world. The human beings have this amazing

capability of working with perceptions, the perception

of being “intelligent”, “tall”, “beautiful”, etc. The

computers, on the other hand, need numbers to work

upon. They don’t go by perception. How to bridge this

gap between the human beings and computers? It is

here that Fuzzy Logic becomes handy. It attributes

a degree of belongingness to every element of a

set. Alice may be “intelligent” to a certain degree

between 0 and 1. Bob may be “tall” to a certain degree

and “short” to the remaining degree. Carol may be

“beautiful” to a very high degree but still carry some

degree of “ugliness”, howsoever less it may be. So, in

the nature, things are not crisply 0 and 1 always. The

nature is better modeled by Fuzzy Theory instead.

Zadeh himself described Fuzzy Logic in one of his

posts dated November 7, 2008 as follows:

Dear Members of the BISC Group,

There are many misconceptions about fuzzy logic.

The following may help to clarify what fuzzy logic is and

what it has to offer.

Fuzzy logic is not fuzzy. Like traditional logical

systems, fuzzy logic is precise. In large measure, fuzzy

logic is designed to address an important class of

problems which are not addressed by traditional logical

systems--problems in which the central issues relate to

imprecision, uncertainty, incompleteness of information,

unreliability and partiality of truth. The importance of

fuzzy logic derives from the fact that in much of the real

world such problems are the norm rather than exception.

Here are a few examples of simple problems which are

not addressed by traditional logical systems.

Most Swedes are tall

Most tall Swedes are blond

What fraction of Swedes are blond?


What is the average height of Swedes?


What is the truth value of “Many Swedes are not

tall”?

X is the value of a real-valued variable. What is

known about X is: (a) X is larger than approximately

a; (b) X is smaller than approximately b. What is the

probability that X is approximately c?

f is a function from reals to reals, Y=f(X). A linguistic

summary of f is described as a collection of fuzzy if-then

rules:

if X is small then Y is small

if X is medium then Y is large

if X is large then Y is small


Prof. M. M. Sufyan Beg obtained his B.Tech. (Electronics) degree from the Aligarh Muslim University, India in 1992 with first rank. He obtained his M.Tech. (Microelectronics) degree from IIT Kanpur, India in 1994. Thereafter, he joined the Department of Electronics Engineering, Aligarh Muslim University, India as a member of the faculty. He has been a Lecturer, a Senior Lecturer and then a Reader in the Department of Computer Engineering at the same University. While on study leave from there, he obtained his Ph.D. degree in the area of Computer Technology from IIT Delhi, India in 2002. He also visited the University of California at Berkeley as a BT Fellow from November 2005 to October 2006. Currently, he is a full Professor at the Department of Computer Engineering at JMI, New Delhi from March 01, 2007. He is also heading this very department at the moment.Prof. Beg has published 6 book chapters and over 60 papers on a wide range of topics in Web Mining and Soft Computing. He has also been an invited lecturer at many places in U.S.A., U.K., K.S.A., Pakistan and India. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and its Computational Intelligence Society. He is also the Life Member of Indian Society for Technical Education (ISTE), Institution of Electronics and Telecommunications Engineers (IETE), Computer Society of India (CSI) and System Society of India (SSI).Prof. Beg was awarded the University Gold Medal for standing First at B.Sc. (Engg.) Examinations (all branches combined). He has also bagged twice the Best Paper Awards and the High Quality Presentation Awards each.Prof. Beg has served as reviewer and has been on the board of many journals and conferences of repute. His current research interests are in the areas of Parallel and Distributed Processing, Soft Computing, Question Answering Systems, Natural Language Processing, Web Mining and Searching.

About the Guest Editor

What is the value of Y if X is larger

than approximately a and smaller than

approximately b?

f is a function from reals to reals which is

described as a collection of fuzzy if-then rules:

if X is small then usually (Y is small)

if X is medium then usually (Y is large)

if X is large then usually (Y is small)

What is the value of Y if usually (X is

medium)?

Pose these problems to those who claim

that anything that can be done with fuzzy logic

can be done equally well without fuzzy logic.

Regards to all,

Lotfi

Zadeh went on to refi ne his defi nition

of Fuzzy Logic in another post dated

December 11, 2008 as follows:

Dear members of the BISC Group,

Refl ecting the posted comments, I should

like to suggest a slightly improved defi nition of

fuzzy logic.

Fuzzy logic is a precise system of

reasoning, deduction and computation in

which the objects of discourse and analysis

are associated with information which is, or is

allowed to be, imperfect.

Imperfect information is defi ned as

information which in one or more respects

is imprecise, uncertain, vague, incomplete,

partially true or partially possible.

Notes

In fuzzy logic everything is or is allowed to be a

matter of degree. Degrees are allowed to be fuzzy.

Fuzzy logic is not a replacement for

bivalent logic or bivalent-logic- based

probability theory. Fuzzy logic adds to bivalent

logic and bivalent-logic-based probability

theory a wide range of concepts and techniques

for dealing with imperfect information.

Fuzzy logic is designed to address problems

in reasoning, deduction and computation with

imperfect information which are beyond the

reach of traditional methods based on bivalent

logic and bivalent-logic - based probability

theory.

In fuzzy logic the writing instrument is

a spray pen with precisely known adjustable

spray pattern. In bivalent logic the writing

instrument is a ballpoint pen.

The importance of fuzzy logic derives from

the fact that in much of the real world imperfect

information is the norm rather than exception.

Comments are welcome.

Warm regards to all.

Lotfi

Zadeh even defi ned “Soft Computing” in

one of his posts dated November 25, 2010

as follows:

Dear Members of the BISC Group:

Soft computing is a coalition of

methodologies which collectively constitute a

system with wide-ranging capabilities for the

conception, design and operation of intelligent

systems. The principal members of the coalition

are: fuzzy logic, neurocomputing, evolutionary

computing and probabilistic computing. The

guiding principle of soft computing is:

In general, better results can be achieved

through the use of constituent methodologies

of soft computing in combination rather than

isolation.

In recent years, the label “Computational

Intelligence” has gained popularity. The

meaning of computational intelligence is close

to the meaning of soft computing.

Comments are welcome. Comments

will be posted to the BISC Group unless it is

requested not to do so.

Warm regards to all.

Lotfi

Fuzzy Theory, in turn, has given

rise to what is now popularly known as

“Computing with Words”. This is in much

contrast to what the computers are used

to doing, viz. computing with just numbers.

Suppose, proposition 1 says “Most balls are

large”, while proposition 2 says “Many large

balls are heavy”. Now, the question “How

many balls are large and heavy?” will have

the answer “(Most x Many)”. How will a

computer calculate this unless it is provided

with the capability of fuzzy membership

functions?

Recently, Zadeh has started talking

about “Precisiated Natural Language (PNL)”.

By the non-dictionary word “Precisiation”, he

means to coin a term for “making precise”.

The natural language, which is otherwise

imprecise in nature, can be converted into a

precise and hence a computable form using

the theory of PNL.

The ideas of Prof. Zadeh are never

ending. Even after having crossed 85 years

of age, he is still writing single-authored

papers. He is an active Director of the

Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing (BISC)

program. He is still giving out keynote talks.

To me, it appears that he did not just invent

Fuzzy Logic and keeps developing it, but he

also preaches it now.

With the huge impact that Prof.

Zadeh has over the Artifi cial Intelligence

community, in general, and the Fuzzy

community, in particular, it is only

appropriate that this special issue of CSI

Communications be dedicated to this living

legend. The highlight of this issue is an

article from Prof. Zadeh himself. An industry

scenario is presented by Dr. Saad Alam.

Under the ‘Who is Who’ column, we have

a short CV of Prof. L. A. Zadeh to inspire us

all. The student’s section includes an article

entitled Computing Linguistic Knowledge

using Fuzzy Theory by Bindu Garg. A State-

of-the-Art report is presented on Decision

Making under Risk and Uncertainty:Revisited

by Vidyottama Jain (Post Doctoral Fellow,

Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing) and

Ashok Deshpande (Chair, Berkeley Initiative

in Soft Computing-Special Interest Group-

Environment Management Systems).

Also included is an article on Computing

in a Fuzzy Environment by Apostolos

Syropoulos.


To begin with, I should like to extend to Professor

Sufyan Beg, the Guest Editor of the Special Issue on

Fuzzy Computing, and the Honorary Chief Editor,

Professor T V Gopal of CSI Communications, my

appreciation for giving me an opportunity to share my

thoughts with the readers of CSI Communications.

I should like to add that one cannot be but highly

impressed by the contributions which Indian

mathematicians, scientists and engineers have made

to the advancement of fuzzy logic and its applications.

To see my refl ections in a proper perspective,

a bit of history is in order. When I chose systems

analysis as my calling, I was a strong believer in the

capability of mathematically-based systems analysis

to solve any problem. Gradually, over a period of time,

my faith began to falter. I became more conscious

of the existence of a vast array of problems which

systems analysis could not address. The problems

were associated, in the main, with human-centric

fi elds such as psychology, sociology, linguistics, law,

economics, political science and biological sciences.

The crocks of the problem is that realistic models of

such systems are hard to construct. Furthermore,

once constructed, the models are hard to analyze. A

familiar example is the stock market. How can one

construct a mathematically precise model of the stock

market? Another example. How can one describe the

relationship between unemployment, infl ation, budget

defi cit, trade imbalance, levels of manufacturing,

imports, exports, etc? Refl ecting on such problems, I

came to the conclusion that what was missing in the

armamentarium of systems analysis was a conceptual

framework which can accommodate systems in which

uncertainty and imprecision relate to unsharpness

of class boundaries. In a 1962 paper entitled “From

Circuit Theory to System Theory,” published in the

Proceedings of IRE (Zadeh 1962), this is what I had

to say:

In fact, there is a fairly wide gap between what

might be regarded as “animate” system theorists

and “inanimate” system theorists at the present

time, and it is not at all certain that this gap will be

narrowed, much less closed, in the near future.

There are some who feel that this gap refl ects

the fundamental inadequacy of the conventional

mathematics the mathematics of precisely-defi ned

points, functions, sets, probability measures, etc. for

coping with the analysis of biological systems, and

that to deal effectively with such systems, which are

generally orders of magnitude more complex than

man-made systems, we need a radically different

kind of mathematics, the mathematics of fuzzy or

cloudy quantities which are not describable in terms

of probability distributions. Indeed, the need for such

mathematics is becoming increasingly apparent even

in the realm of inanimate systems, for in most practical

cases the a priori data as well as the criteria by which

the performance of a man-made system is judged are

far from being precisely specifi ed or having accurately

known probability distributions. (2)

Since I am not a mathematician by training, I tried

to persuade my two best friends, Richard Bellman and

Herbert Robbins, both brilliant mathematicians, to

develop a formalism for dealing with non-probabilistic

imprecision. I was not successful.

The problem was on my mind much of the time.

In June of 1964 I was visiting my parents in New York. I

was going to have dinner with a friend. My friend could

not make it. I was alone in my parents’ apartment. At

that point a simple idea occurred to me. Precisiate a

class with unsharp boundaries by associating each

element with a grade of membership in the class. This

was the genesis of the concept of a fuzzy set. I gave

quite a bit of thought on how to call a precisiated class

with unsharp boundaries. I settled on the name “Fuzzy

Sets,” knowing full well that in English “fuzzy” is not

a good word. I did so because I could not think of a

euphonious name that would describe what I had in

mind. I wrote a short memorandum on fuzzy sets and

sent it to Bellman for his comment. This is what he wrote:

THEME ARTICLE

Some Refl ections on the Birth and Evolution of Fuzzy Set TheoryLotfi A. Zadeh1

Department of EECS, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1776, USA.

Email: [email protected]

Department of EECS, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1776; Telephone: 510-642-4959;

Fax: 510-642-1712; Email: [email protected]. Research supported in part by ONR N00014-09-1-0914,

BT Grant CT1080028046, Omron Grant, Tekes Grant, Azerbaijan Ministry of Communications and Information

Technology Grant, Azerbaijan University of Azerbaijan Republic and the BISC Program of UC Berkeley.

Father of Fuzzy Logic


Dear Lotfi :

I think that the paper is extremely

interesting and I would like to publish it in

JMAA, if agreeable to you. When I return, or

while in Paris, I will write a companion paper

on optimal decomposition of a set into subsets

along the lines of our discussion.

Cordially,

Richard Bellman

It did not take me long to prepare a paper

for publication. I submitted a paper entitled

“Fuzzy Sets” to Information and Control

(Zadeh 1965). I chose Information and

Control because I was on its Editorial Board,

in anticipation that reviewers would be

skeptical. That turned out to be the case. I got

one lukewarm review. If I were not a member

of the Editorial Board my paper would have

been rejected. Such are the facts of life.

My fi rst paper was basically what I

call today an FL-generalization of naive

set theory. FL-generalization of a theory,

T, involves replacing the concept of a set

in T with the concept of a fuzzy set. This

replacement results in a theory which may

be called fuzzy T. FL-generalization can be

applied to any theory and any formalism.

Today, there are many FL-theories in the

literature, among them fuzzy topology, fuzzy

arithmetic, fuzzy control, fuzzy game theory,

fuzzy linear programming, etc. I believe that

eventually most scientifi c theories, most

algorithms and most concepts will be FL-

generalized.

The reaction to my paper was for the

most part one of indifference, skepticism,

hostility, and, occasionally approbation. In

1996, one person who liked my ideas was

my mentor, the eminent logician Stephen

Kleene. At his suggestion I was invited to

present a paper on fuzzy sets at the 1966

International Congress of Mathematicians

in Moscow. In 1966, I gave a seminar lecture

at UCLA. Here are a skeptical comment by

Professor Geoffrion and a positive comment

by Professor Edmundson:

Discussion of “Fuzzy Sets and Concepts,”

by L.A. Zadeh on November 18, 1966.

Arthur Geoffrion (WMSI)

I agree with your remark during the

Colloquium that the present development

of fuzzy sets is probably still overly

restrictive for many potential applications.

It is applicable when there is a standardized

and perfectly accurate method of measuring

degree of class membership, but it seems to

be considerably less applicable otherwise,

as when opinion is involved.

H.P. Edmundson (Linguistics, UCLA)

Professor Zadeh’s view that the

concept of fuzzy sets seems to be needed

in many disciplines has been supported by

comments today from specialists in the

fi elds of psychology, economics, and logic.

In this connection I would like to point

out that fuzzy sets also arise in linguistics.

In particular, in the study of semantics,

attempts to formulate satisfactorily the

notion of a semantic space using crisp sets

have essentially failed. As a consequence,

the modeling of meaning as a set of senses

or the modeling of synonymy in terms of

equivalence classes has proved diffi cult to

justify either theoretically or empirically. It

seems likely that the concept of fuzzy set

will provide a way to account for what has

been called a “semantic space” and lead to

a suitable metric or pseudometric. Similarly,

it also may lead to a satisfactory way to

replace the strict dichotomy of sentences

as grammatical or ungrammatical, by a

more natural concept involving grade of

membership.

What is important to note is that the

country in which my ideas were welcomed

and developed was Japan. Here is a letter

which I received in 1966 from a researcher

in Japan:

Nippon Hoso Kyokai, 1966

Dear Sir,

In one of the last volumes of “Information

and Control,” I have read your interesting

papers on “Fuzzy Sets.” We are working about

‘Pattern Recognition,’ ‘Artifi cial Intelligence’ or

something like that since just a short time, and

therefore I am highly interested in your work.

Yours sincerely,

Yoshinori Uesaka

In Japan, the most visible application

area of fuzzy set theory is consumer products

such as washing machines, microwave

ovens, cameras, vacuum cleaners, etc. One

of the most noteworthy applications was

the subway system in the city of Sindai,

inaugurated in 1987, which was designed

and built by Hitachi and Kawasaki Heavy

Industries. What is remarkable is that work

on the system began in 1976, at a time when

fuzzy set theory was still in its early stages

of development.

When I wrote my fi rst paper on fuzzy

sets my expectation was that fuzzy set

theory would be welcomed in the realm of

human-centric sciences—a realm for which

it was intended. Contrary to my expectation

this was not the case. The main application

areas of fuzzy set theory were, and still

are, in the realm of engineering systems

and consumer products—application areas

in which traditional methods of systems

analysis can be employed. An interesting

question is: Why? There are many reasons,

one of which is that the mathematics

of fuzzy set theory is easy to master by

engineers and scientists, and much less so

by those who work in human-centric fi elds.

There is another important reason which

will be discussed at a later point.

A few years after the publication of my

fi rst paper I began to realize that fuzzy set

theory may have important applications in

the realm of control. I sketched my ideas

in a 1972 note entitled “A Rationale for

Fuzzy Control.” (Zadeh 1972) But a pivotal

paper which made fuzzy control a reality

was my 1973 paper entitled “Outline of a

New Approach to the Analysis of Complex

Systems and Decision Processes.” (Zadeh

1973) Two key concepts which were

introduced in this paper were those of a

linguistic variable and fuzzy-if-then rule.

Not long after the publication of my paper,

Mamdani and Assilian described, in their

pioneering paper, an application of the

concepts of linguistic variable and fuzzy

if-then rule to the control of a laboratory

steam engine. (Mamdani 1975) This was

the beginning of the era of fuzzy control.

Today, close to 40 years later, the concepts

of linguistic variable and fuzzy if-then rule

still play a key role in most applications of

fuzzy set theory.

My 1973 paper opened the door to

describing system behavior in natural

language. This was its key contribution. If

there is a tolerance for imprecision, it can

be exploited by describing the behavior of

a system in natural language. Subsequently,

natural language is precisiated through

graduation of the meaning of words, that is,

through describing the meaning of words

through fuzzy sets. This is the essence

of what I call Fuzzy Logic Gambit. Today,

Fuzzy Logic Gambit is employed in many

applications of fuzzy set theory, especially

in the realm of consumer products. Fuzzy

Logic Gambit is one of the principal reasons

why fuzzy set theory turned out to play an

important role in conception, design and

utilization of engineering systems.

My 1973 paper may be viewed as a

move from the use of numbers to the use

of words. The countertraditional spirit of

this move evoked a great deal of hostility.

Following my 1972 lecture on linguistic

variables and fuzzy if-then rules in France,

my good friend and a brilliant systems

scientist, Rudolf Kalman had this to say:

I would like to comment briefl y

on Professor Zadeh’s presentation. His

proposals could be severely, ferociously,

even brutally criticized from a technical point

of view. This would be out of place here.

But a blunt question remains: Is Professor

Zadeh presenting important ideas or is he

indulging in wishful thinking? No doubt

Professor Zadeh’s enthusiasm for fuzziness

has been reinforced by the prevailing


climate in the U.S. – one of unprecedented

permissiveness. ‘Fuzzifi cation’ is a kind of

scientifi c permissiveness; it tends to result in

socially appealing slogans unaccompanied

by the discipline of hard scientifi c work and

patient observation.

In a similar vein, my colleague, a brilliant

computer scientist, William Kahan, wrote:

“Fuzzy theory is wrong, wrong, and

pernicious.” says William Kahan, a professor

of computer sciences and mathematics at Cal

whose Evans Hall Offi ce is a few doors from

Zadeh’s. “I cannot think of any problem that

could not be solved better by ordinary logic.”

“What Zadeh is saying is the same sort

of things ‘Technology got us into this mess

and now it can’t get us out.’” Kahan says.

“Well, technology did not get us into this

mess. Greed and weakness and ambivalence

got us into this mess. What we need is more

logical thinking, not less. The danger of fuzzy

theory is that it will encourage the sort of

imprecise thinking that has brought us so

much trouble.”

Fuzzy logic was introduced in my

1975 paper entitled “Fuzzy Logic and

Approximate Reasoning.” (Zadeh 1975a)

This paper and my long 1975 paper “The

Concept of a Linguistic Variable and its

Application to Approximate Reasoning”

opened a new direction in the development

of fuzzy set theory. (Zadeh 1975b) What

should be underscored is that fuzzy logic

has a much broader scope than multivalued

logic and a very different agenda. In fuzzy

logic everything is or is allowed to be a

matter of degree.

A methodology which is very closely

related to fuzzy logic is Computing with

Words (CW or CWW). (Zadeh 1999) On

the face of it, CW may appear to be related

to natural language processing. In fact, this

is not the case. CW and natural language

processing have very different agendas.

In large measure, CW is concerned with

solutions which are stated in a natural

language. A simple example is the following:

I am scheduled to fl y from San

Francisco to Los Angeles. My fl ight is

scheduled to leave at 5pm. I have to be at

the airport about an hour before departure.

Usually it takes about forty fi ve minutes to

get to the airport from my home. I would like

to be pretty sure that I arrive at the airport in

time. At what time should I leave my home?

Use of CW is greatly facilitated

through employment of what may be called

a Z-mouse. Briefl y, the cursor, called an

f-mark of a Z-mouse is a circular fuzzy set

with a trapezoidal cross section. The curser

is used to mark the value of a variable of a

lighted scale. Position of an f-mark and its

size is controlled by the user. The size is a

measure of uncertainty and/or imprecision

of the user’s perception of the value of

the variable. An f-mark is read as the

membership function of a trapezoidal fuzzy

set. The trapezoidal fuzzy sets serve as

arguments of an aggregation function which

computes the desired value of a variable.

[See Figure 1].

In my view, Computing with Words is

an important direction in the evolution of

fuzzy set theory—a direction which opens

the door to a wide-ranging enlargement of

the role of natural languages in scientifi c

theories and engineering systems. The

principal concepts which underlie CW may

be summarized as follows.

Computing with Words is a

system of computation which offers

an important capability that traditional

systems of computation do not have—a

capability to compute with information

described in a natural language. In the main,

CW is concerned with solution of problems

which are stated in a natural language. The

importance of CW derives from the fact that

much of human knowledge is perception-

based and is described in a natural language.

The point of departure in CW is a

question, q, of the form: What is the value of

a variable, X? q is associated with a question-

relevant information set, I, an association

expressed as X is I, meaning that the answer

to q, Ans(q/I), is to be deduced (computed)

from I. Typically, I consists of a collection of

propositions, p1, ..., p

n, which individually or

collectively are carriers of information about

the value of X. In I, some or all of the pi, i=1,

…, n, are expressed in a natural language.

Some of the pi may be drawn from external

sources of information, typically from world

knowledge. I is open if it includes propositions

drawn from external sources of information. I

is closed if inclusion is not allowed.

Precisiation of meaning is a prerequisite

to computation with information which

is described in a natural language. If p is a

proposition drawn from a natural language,

then precisiation of p leads to a computation-

ready proposition, p*, which may be viewed

as a computational meaning of p or,

equivalently, as a computational model of

p. p* is assumed to be mathematically well-

defi ned and is intended to serve as an object

of computation. In CW, there are two levels

of generality, Level 1 and Level 2. In Level 1

CW, the carriers of information are simple

propositions. Examples: Vera is middle-

aged; if Pressure is high then Volume is low.

In Level 2 CW, the carriers of information

are complex propositions. Example: Usually

it takes Robert about an hour to get home

from work. Today, the bulk of the literature

is still focused on Level 1 CW. In particular,

the widely used calculi of fuzzy if-then rules

fall within the province of Level 1 CW.

Computation of Ans(q/I) is carried out

in two phases. Phase 1, called Precisiation,

involves precisiation of q and I, leading

to precisiated q, q*, and precisiated I, I*.

Phase 2, called Computation, involves

computation with q* and I*, leading to

Ans(q/I). This is done through the use of an

aggregation function which has the pi* as its

arguments. In CW, the pi* are represented

as generalized assignment statements or,

equivalently, as generalized constraints.

Computation with the pi* involves

propagation and counterpropagation of

generalized constraints. In CW, precisiation

and computation employ the machinery of

fuzzy logic.

A generalized constraint is an

expression of the form X isr R, where X is

a constrained variable which, in general, is

implicit in p; R is the constraining relation

which, like X, is in general implicit in p;

and r is an indexing variable whose value

identifi es the way in which R constrains

X. The principal types of constraints are:

equality (r is =); possibilistic (r is blank);

veristic (r is v); probabilistic (r is p); random

set (r is rs); fuzzy graph (r is fg); usuality (r

is u); and Pawlak set (r is ps). In this system

of classifi cation of constraints, the standard

constraint, X belongs to C, where C is a

crisp set, is possibilistic. Representation of

p as a generalized constraint is the point

of departure in what is called Precisiated

Natural Language (PNL). (Zadeh 2004)

PNL associates with a natural

language, NL, a precisiation language, GCL

(Generalized Constraint Language), which

consists of generalized constraints and

Time of

departure

Time of

arrivalUsually

1

&.8

Time of

departure

from home

5 pm

*3:50 pm

*4 pm

f-mark

specifi ed specifi ed

computed

specifi ed trial

0 0 0 0

allyy

11

&.88

111111

m

ff m

m

m

homemee

Fig. 1 : Z-mouse representation of values of variable


their combinations and qualifi cations. A

simple example of an element of GCL is:

(X is A) and (X, Y) isu B. A proposition, p,

in NL is precisiable if it is translatable into

GCL. In effect, PNL is a sublanguage of NL

which consists of propositions which are

precisiable through translation into GCL.

More concretely, PNL is associated with

three dictionaries (a) from NL to GCL,

(b) from GCL to what is referred to as the

Protoform Language (PFL), and (c) from NL

to PFL. An element of PFL is an abstracted

version of an element of GCL. The translates

of p into GCL and PFL are denoted as GC(p)

and PF(p ), respectively.

In addition, PNL is associated with a

deduction module, DM, which consists of

rules of deduction expressed in PFL. An

example of such a rule is the intersection/

product syllogism: if Q A’s are B’s and R

(A and B)’s are C’s, then QR A’s are (B and

C)’s, where Q and R are fuzzy quantifi ers,

e.g., most, many, few; A, B and C are fuzzy

sets, and QR is the product of Q and R in

fuzzy arithmetic. Basically, a protoform of p,

PF(p), identifi es its deep structure.

The principal function of PNL is to serve

as a system for computation and reasoning

with perceptions. A related function is that

of serving as a defi nition language. In this

capacity, PNL may be used to (a) defi ne

new concepts, e.g., the usual value of a

random variable; and (b) redefi ne existing

concepts, e.g., the concepts of statistical

independence, risk and stability. The need

for redefi nition arises because standard

bivalent-classic-based defi nitions may lead

to counterintuitive conclusions.

CW has important applications to

decision analysis, question-answering

systems, system modeling, specifi cation

and optimization, and mechanization of

natural language understanding. CW is

based on fuzzy logic. In its early history,

fuzzy logic was an object of skepticism and

derision. Today fuzzy logic is in wide use but

not as yet accepted by all. A brief report on

the impact of fuzzy logic speaks for itself.

Patents

� Number of fuzzy-logic-related patents

applied for in Japan: 17,740


issued in Japan: 4,801


issued in the US: around 1,700

Journals

Fuzzy in title

1. Fuzzy Sets and Systems

2. IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems

3. Fuzzy Optimization and Decision Making

4. Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems

5. Fuzzy Economic Review

6. International Journal of Uncertainty,

Fuzziness & Knowledge-Based Systems

7. Journal of Japan Society for Fuzzy

Theory and Systems

8. International Journal of Fuzzy Systems

9. International Review of Fuzzy

Mathematics

10. Fuzzy Systems and Soft Computing

11. Turkish Journal of Fuzzy Systems

12. Annals of Fuzzy Sets, Fuzzy Logic and

Fuzzy Systems

Count of Publications

� Count of publications containing the

word “fuzzy” in the title, as cited in

INSPEC and MATH.SCI.NET databases.

Compiled on October 4, 2010.

Inspec Database

1970-1979 : 521

1980-1989 : 2,163

1990-1999 : 20,210

2000-present : 48,627

Total : 71,521

MathSciNet Database

1970-1979 : 444

1980-1989 : 2,466

1990-1999 : 5,487

2000-present : 10,439

Total : 18,863

� Number of citations of papers by L.A.

Zadeh (Web of Science Citation): 28,122

� Number of citations of papers by L.A.

Zadeh (Google Scholar): 85,500

References1. Mamdani, E.H., Assilian, S., An experiment

in linguistic synthesis with a fuzzy logic

controller, International Journal of Man–

Machine Studies 7, 1–13, 1975.

2. Zadeh, L.A., From circuit theory to system

theory, Proc. IRE 50, 856-865, 1962.

3. Zadeh, L.A., Fuzzy sets, Information and

Control 8, 338-353, 1965.

4. Zadeh, L.A., A rationale for fuzzy control,

Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement

and Control 94, Series G, 3-4, 1972.

5. Zadeh, L.A., Outline of a new approach

to the analysis of complex systems and

decision processes, IEEE Transactions on

Systems, Man and Cybernetics SMC-3, 28-

44, 1973.

6. Zadeh, L.A., Fuzzy logic and approximate

reasoning, (In Memory of Grigore Moisil),

Synthese 30, 407-428, 1975a.

7. Zadeh, L.A., The concept of a linguistic

variable and its application to approximate

reasoning, Part I: Inf. Sci.8, 199-249, 1975;

Part II: Inf. Sci. 8, 301-357, 1975; Part III: Inf.

Sci. 9, 43-80, 1975b.

8. Zadeh, L.A., From computing with numbers

to computing with words –from manipulation

of measurements to manipulation of

perceptions, IEEE Transactions on Circuits

and Systems 45, 105-119, 1999.

9. Zadeh, L.A., Precisiated natural language

(PNL), AI Magazine, Vol. 25, No. 3, 74-91,

2004.

(http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~zadeh/scv.html)

LOTFI A. ZADEH is a Professor in the Graduate School, Computer Science Division, Department of EECS, University of California, Berkeley. In addition,

he is serving as the Director of BISC (Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing).

Lotfi Zadeh is an alumnus of the University of Tehran, MIT and Columbia University. He held visiting appointments at the Institute for Advanced Study,

Princeton, NJ; MIT, Cambridge, MA; IBM Research Laboratory, San Jose, CA; AI Center, SRI International, Menlo Park, CA; and the Center for the Study

of Language and Information, Stanford University. His earlier work was concerned in the main with systems analysis, decision analysis and information

systems. His current research is focused on fuzzy logic, computing with words and soft computing, which is a coalition of fuzzy logic, neurocomputing,

evolutionary computing, probabilistic computing and parts of machine learning.

Lotfi Zadeh is a Fellow of the IEEE, AAAS, ACM, AAAI, and IFSA. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Foreign Member of the

Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, the Finnish Academy of Sciences, the Polish Academy of Sciences, Korean Academy of Science & Technology and

the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. He is a recipient of the IEEE Education Medal, the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal, the IEEE Medal of Honor, the

ASME Rufus Oldenburger Medal, the B. Bolzano Medal of the Czech Academy of Sciences, the Kampe de Feriet Medal, the AACC Richard E. Bellman

Control Heritage Award, the Grigore Moisil Prize, the Honda Prize, the Okawa Prize, the AIM Information Science Award, the IEEE-SMC J. P. Wohl Career

Achievement Award, the SOFT Scientifi c Contribution Memorial Award of the Japan Society for Fuzzy Theory, the IEEE Millennium Medal, the ACM

2001 Allen Newell Award, the Norbert Wiener Award of the IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society, Civitate Honoris Causa by Budapest Tech

(BT) Polytechnical Institution, Budapest, Hungary, the V. Kaufmann Prize, International Association for Fuzzy-Set Management and Economy (SIGEF),

the Nicolaus Copernicus Medal of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the J. Keith Brimacombe IPMM Award, the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame,

the Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum Wall of Fame, other awards and twenty-six honorary doctorates. He has published extensively on a wide variety of

subjects relating to the conception, design and analysis of information/intelligent systems, and is serving on the editorial boards of over sixty journals.

About the Author


Introduction

In real life scenario, most decisions are made

without advance knowledge of their consequences,

which lead to some degree of risk or uncertainty. The

study of decision-making under risk and uncertainty

has received signifi cant attention from economists

and psychologists in the last few decades.

The best-known defi nition of risk is provided

by Knight in 1921 during a period of active research

into the foundations of probability. Economist Knight

fi rst distinguishes risk from uncertainty. Decisions

under risk entail options that have well specifi ed or

transparent outcome probabilities, such as a bet

on a coin toss or a lottery with a known number of

tickets. Decisions under uncertainty, by contrast,

entail options whose outcomes depend on natural

events such as a victory by the home team or a rise in

interest rates, so that probabilities must be estimated

by the decision maker with some degree of vagueness

or imprecision. Knight acknowledged that his use of

the term risk did not conform to the common usage.

The fi rst and predominant economic theory for

decision making under risk, formulated axiomatically

by Von Neumann and Morgenstern [9], is expected

utility theory. Further, experimental evidence shows

that people violate the axioms of Von Neumann and

Morgenstern [9]. Allais paradox is the most perfect

and celebrated violation of expected utility theory.

In 1979 Kahneman and Tversky [2] proposed a

leading behavioral model of decision making under

risk and uncertainty, named as prospect theory, which

accommodates Allais paradox and the violation of

Von Neumann and Morgenstern axioms. This original

prospect theory has some drawbacks; it is not always

satisfy stochastic dominance and also it cannot be

applied to prospects with large number of outcomes.

In an important later development several

authors (Quiggin [5], Schmeilder [6], Yaari and

Weymark) have developed a new representation call

the rank dependent model and sign dependent model,

which transforms cumulative rather than individual

probabilities. Further, Tversky and Kahneman [8]

represents prospect theory incorporating rank

dependent model and resolved the original prospect

theory issues.

This paper is organized as follows. Section I is

the introduction. Decision making under risk and

uncertainty with a brief write up on the mathematical

foundation of prospect theory is covered in Section II.

The contents of Section III refer to Zadeh’s suggested

real life problems and the scope for future research.

Decision Making under Risk and Uncertainty

There is an extensive literature on decision-

making under risk, but the foundation stone of

decision theory is 17th century correspondence

between Pascal and Fermat that laid fundamental

groundwork for the theory of probability. Following

this work, theorists asserted that decision makers will

choose the option which offers the highest expected

value (EV). Expected value is calculated by

where ix is the outcome of state i and ip is the

probability of state i.

An individual may have different risk attitudes

THEME ARTICLE

Decision Making under Risk and Uncertainty : RevisitedVidyottama Jain* and Ashok Deshpande£

* BISC-Post Doctoral Fellow, Department of Computer Science, University of California Berkeley, USA

Email: *[email protected]£ Chair: Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing (BISC)-Special Interest Group (SIG)-Environment Management

Systems (EMS) Email: [email protected]

The importance and real potential of decision making under risk and uncertainty based on perceptions and behavioral aspects related to real life is now being well recognized. In this paper, we present a review of some important approaches discussing decision making under risk and uncertainty. Further, Zadeh’s suggested real life problems are presented with the future research scope.

Keywords decision making, choices, risk,uncertainty, perception, imprecise probability, fuzzy environment.


while making decision under risky situation.

He will be called risk neutral if he is indifferent

between bet and its expected value; he will

be called risk averse if he prefers certain

payment to a risky prospect of equal or

higher expected value; he will be called risk

seeking if he prefers a risky prospect to a

sure payment of equal or higher expected

value. Thus, expected value maximization

assumes a neutral attitude toward risk.

Daniel Bernoulli’s observed that

people’s utility from wealth, is not linearly

related to wealth but rather increases at

a decreasing rate - the famous idea of

diminishing marginal utility. He asserted

that a person’s valuation of an option is not

by their objective values but rather by their

utility or moral values. This gives rise to a

utility function, which is concave over states

of wealth. He modifi ed expected value

theory by presenting that decision makers

choose the option with highest expected

utility

where u(xi) represents the utility of

obtaining outcome xi.

Expected utility theory gained more

power in economic world when Von

Neumann and Morgenstern [9] exhibited

a set of axioms (NM axioms) between

preferences of expected utility theory. If

all these axioms are satisfi ed, then the

individual is said to be rational and the

preferences can be represented by a utility

function. These axioms are very simple,

though people in both experimental and

real life situations frequently do not conform

to the NM axioms. Allais Paradox is the

most celebrated violation of NM axioms of

expected utility theory.

Further, Tversky and Kahneman

have demonstrated in numerous highly

controlled experiments that most people

systematically violate all of the basic

axioms of expected utility theory in their

actual decision making behavior at least

some times. In response to their fi ndings,

Tversky and Kahneman proposed a theory

of choice, based on psychophysical model,

which accurately describes how people go

about making their decisions. The Original

Prospect Theory (OPT), suggested by

Kahneman and Tversky in 1979 [2], is based

on non-linear transformation of outcome

and probabilities, which allow describing

psychological aspects of decision-making.

The OPT developed for simple prospects

with monetary outcomes and stated

probabilities has three major characteristics:

1. Reference point dependence : An

individual views consequences

(monetary or other) in terms of

changes from the reference point,

which is usually that individual’s status

quo.

2. Diminishing sensitivity: The values

of the outcomes for both positive

and negative consequences of the

choice have the diminishing returns

characteristic. That means limit values

of gains and losses decrease with an

increase of their absolute values.

3. Loss aversion: Losses loom larger than

gains which means people prefer “not

to bear losses”.

OPT predicts that people go through

two distinct stages while taking decisions.

In the fi rst phase, decision makers are

predicted to edit a complicated decision into

a simpler prospect, usually specifi ed in terms

of gains or losses. In the second phase, the

decision makers evaluate each of the edited

prospects available to them and choose the

prospect of highest value between the edited

prospects. This evaluation is expressed in

terms of two scales w and v. The fi rst scale w

associates with each probability p a decision

weight w(p) which shows the impact of p

on the over all value of the prospect. The

second scale, v, assigns to each outcome a

number v(x) that gives the subjective value

of that outcome x. Therefore, the evaluation

function for a prospect (xi, p

i) is given by

where pi is perceived probability of outcome

xi, w(p

i) is the probability weighting function

and v(xi) is value function.

The value function v(xi) has the

following properties based on the above

mentioned thee properties of OPT and it is

depicted in Fig. 1:

1. It is defi ned on deviations from a

reference point.

2. It is concave for gains and convex for

losses.

3. It is steeper for losses than for gains.

value function v(.)

losses gains

Fig. 1: Value function v as a function of gains and

losses.

Here, the probability weighting function

is a monotonic function defi ned over (0,1).

Consequently, the weighting function does

not always satisfy stochastic dominance.

Also, in their experiments Kahneman

and Tversky ([2], [8]) observed that

the interplay of over weighting of small

probabilities and concavity-convexity of the

value function leads to the so-called fourfold

pattern of risk attitudes: risk-averse for high

probability gains and low probability losses;

risk-seeking for low probability gains and

high probability losses.

In brief, OPT encounters two problems:

1. Weighting function does not always

satisfy stochastic dominance and,

2. OPT cannot be applied to prospects

with a large number of outcomes.

These problems can be resolved by

the rank dependent model or cumulative

functional fi rst proposed by Quiggin [5]

for decision under risk. On the basis of rank

dependent model, Tversky and Kahneman

[8] proposed cumulative representation

of prospect theory, which applies rank

dependent model separately to gains and

losses. Also, this cumulative prospect theory

can be applied to uncertain as well as risky

prospects with any number of outcomes.

Following Tversky and Kahneman [8],

the value function can be parameterized as

a power function

where α,β measure the curvature of

the value function for gains and losses,

respectively, and λ is the coeffi cient of loss

aversion. This value function for gains and

losses is increasingly concave and convex

respectively for α,β<1.

The weighting function, defi ned by

Tversky and Kahneman [8], is an inverse-

S-shaped weighting function. It is concave

near 0 and convex near 1 as presented in

the Fig. 2. It is very clearly explaining the

fourfold pattern of risk attitudes as the low

are overweighted (leading to risk seeking

for gains and risk aversion for losses) and

high probabilities are underweighted the

weighting function (leading to risk seeking

for losses and risk aversion for gains). It

also satisfi es Allais paradox. Therefore, this

modifi ed inverse-S-shaped weighting is more

consistent with a range of empirical fi ndings.1

10

weighting

function

w(.)

Probability p

Fig. 2 : weighting function w for gains as a function of

the probability p of a chance event.


Following Lattimore et al. [4], the

weighting function can be parameterized in

the following form

It assumes that the relation between

w and p is linear in a log-odds metric. Here

δ measures the elevation of the weighting

function and γmeasures its degree of

curvature. The cumulative prospect theory

parameters δλβα ,,, and γ can all

be estimated for individuals using simple

choices tasks on computer ([7], [8], [10]).

Zadeh’s suggested real life problems

Decision - making under risk and

uncertainty is associated with an extensive

literature. Lotfi Zadeh has given a new

direction to think over decision making

under second order uncertainty. Imprecise

probability and fuzzy set of type 2 are

instances of second order uncertainty. In

reality, many high level decisions, which

are made to resolve the fi nancial crisis, are

treated as decisions under second order

uncertainty.

Lotfi Zadeh stated the following

example involving decision making with

imprecise probability.

Statement of the problem: Assume

that we have two open boxes, A and B, each

containing twenty black and white balls. A

ball is picked at random. If I pick a white ball

from A, I win a1 dollars; if I pick a black ball, I

lose a2 dollars. Similarly, if I pick a white ball

from B, I win b1 dollars; and if I pick a black

ball, I lose b2 dollars.

Pb.1 An elementary example of decision

making under uncertainty with precise

probability: If I could count the number

of white balls in A, say m, then the

probability of picking a white balls

would m/20. In the case of B, the

probability would be n/20. If I have to

make a choice between A and B, which

one should I choose? What would be

the degree of preference? This is an

example of decision-making under

uncertainty with precise probabilities.

Pb.2 Now, next assume that I am shown A

and B but not long enough to allow me

to count the number of white balls. I

form perceptions of m and n. I represent

these perceptions as fuzzy marks on a

scale from 0 to 1 using a spray pen. At

this point, there are two versions of

the problem. Here, the fuzzy marks are

not precisiated. All we have are visual

perceptions.

The fi rst suggested problem by

Zadeh can be solved using Kahneman and

Tversky’s cumulative prospect theory [8] as

explained in Section II.

The inherent concept in the second

problem, which describes decision making

under imprecise probability, carries the

potential for a major impact on the ways in

which uncertainty/imprecision is dealt with

in science, engineering and other domains of

human activity. It is, therefore, our endeavor

to develop an imprecise probability based

formulation in a fuzzy environment, which

might be useful to the decision makers in

resolving some of the realistic problems.

Acknowledgment

We are deeply indebted and would like

to express our immense gratitude towards

Prof Lotfi A. Zadeh, the father of fuzzy

logic for his motivation and all helpful and

insightful suggestions.

References

[1] R. Gonzalez and G. Wu, “`On the shape

of the probability weighting function”,

Cogn. Psychol., 38, pp 129– 166, 1999.

[2] D. Kahneman and A. Tversky, “Prospect

theory: an analysis of decision under

risk”, Econometrica, 4, pp 263– 291,

1979.

[3] F. H. Knight, Risk, Uncertainty, and

Profi t, New York: Hart, Schaffner, and

Marx, 1921.

[4] P.K. Lattimore, J.R. Baker, and A.D.

Witte, “The influence of probability

on r isky choice—A parametr ic

examination”, J. Econ. Behav. Organ.,

17 (3), pp 377–400, 1992.

[5] J. Quiggin, “A theory of anticipated

utility”, Journal of Economic Behavior

and Organization, 3(4), pp 323-343,

1982.

[6] D. Schmeilder, “Subjective probability

and expected utility without additivity”,

57(3), pp 571-587, 1989.

[7] Christopher Trepel, Craig R. Fox, and

Russell A. Poldrack, “Prospect theory

on the brain? Toward a cognitive

neuroscience of decision under risk”,

Cognitive brain research, 23, pp 34-50,

2005.

[8] A. Tversky and D. Kahneman,

“Advances in prospect theory:

c u m u l a t i v e r e p r e s e n t a t i o n o f

uncertainty”, J. Risk Uncertainty, 5(4),

pp 297–323, 1992.

[9] J. von Neumann, O. Morgenstern,

Theory of games and economic

behavior, Princeton Univ. Press,

Princeton, NJ, 1944.

[10] G. Wu and R. Gonzalez, “Curvature

of the probability weighting function”,

Manage. Sci., 42, pp 1676-1690, 1996.

[11] Lotfi A. Zadeh, “Toward a perception

based theory of probabilistic reasoning

with imprecise probabilities”, J.

Statistical Planning and Inference, 105,

pp 233-264, 2002.

FL offers several unique features that make it a particularly good

choice for many control problems.

1. It is inherently robust since it does not require precise, noise-

free inputs and can be programmed to fail safely if a feedback

sensor quits or is destroyed. The output control is a smooth

control function despite a wide range of input variations.

2. Since the FL controller processes user-defi ned rules governing

the target control system, it can be modifi ed and tweaked

easily to improve or drastically alter system performance. New

sensors can easily be incorporated into the system simply by

generating appropriate governing rules.

3. FL is not limited to a few feedback inputs and one or two

control outputs, nor is it necessary to measure or compute

rate-of-change parameters in order for it to be implemented.

Any sensor data that provides some indication of a system’s

actions and reactions is suffi cient. This allows the sensors to

be inexpensive and imprecise thus keeping the overall system

cost and complexity low.

4. Because of the rule-based operation, any reasonable number

of inputs can be processed (1-8 or more) and numerous

outputs (1-4 or more) generated, although defi ning the rule

base quickly becomes complex if too many inputs and outputs

are chosen for a single implementation since rules defi ning

their interrelations must also be defi ned. It would be better to

break the control system into smaller chunks and use several

smaller FL controllers distributed on the system, each with

more limited responsibilities.

5. FL can control nonlinear systems that would be diffi cult or

impossible to model mathematically. This opens doors for

control systems that would normally be deemed unfeasible for

automation.

Why Use Fuzzy Logic [FL]?[Excerpted from: Web Based Tutorial - Steven D. Kaehler, Fuzzy Logic - An Introduction - Part 2, http://www.seattlerobotics.org/encoder/mar98/fuz/fl _part2.html]


Fourteen years after the publishing of Zadeh’s

pioneer fuzzy sets theory, fi rst fuzzy logic based

industrial application was put into operation at a

rotary kiln by FLS Automation in 1979 in Denmark1.

Research and development divisions of various

industries have investigated the applications of fuzzy

logic control (FLC) in their respective control systems

around the globe. However, at a commercial level the

industrial response was quite contradictory between

the eastern and the western hemispheres of the world

till early 90’s. The Japanese industry on one side has

fi led more than one thousand patents and implements

it from home appliances such as washing machines

refrigerators, air conditioners, vacuum cleaners, rice

cookers etc. to the control of famous Japanese Bullet

train with a turnover of billions of dollars through

the sale of these fuzzy logic control based products

to consumers throughout the world. In the western

world especially in US, inspite of the origin country

of fuzzy logic theory, commercial level research has

not started until the last decade. A major reason could

be the lack of exposure of engineers to fuzzy theory

at the academic curriculum level which leads to lack

of understanding and believe in the effi ciency of the

fuzzy theory. Secondly, most if not all the application

have not involved the replacement of a standard

type controller (PID, PI, PD) but, rather than multi-

variable supervisory control. However, as the research

related to fuzzy systems is getting mature, the general

prospective is being changed. An industrial road map

of fuzzy logic control can be summarized as2:

1965 Seminal paper “Fuzzy Logic” by Prof. Lotfi

Zadeh

1970 1st application of Fuzzy Logic in control

(FLC) Engineering in Europe

1975 Intro of Fuzzy Logic in Japan

1980 Empirical Verifi cation of Fuzzy Logic in

Europe

1985 Broad application of FL in Japan

1990 Broad application of FL in Europe

1995 Broad application of FL in US

2000 FL becomes a standard technology and is

also applied in data and sensor signal analysis.

According to an application based study by IEEE2

(1996) about 1100 successful fuzzy logic applications

have been published. Nearly all of these applications

use a multi-variable supervisory control ranging from

embedded control (28%), Industrial automation

(62%) to Process control (10%). Results of a

questionnaire administered to 311 individuals reveal

nearly 90% agree that fuzzy logic has improved design

time by 50% and 97.5% responded that fuzzy logic

would be benefi cial to use in their future applications.

Now days, Fuzzy logic is used extensively as

the backbone of many control systems. Researchers

have used fuzzy logic controllers in order to reduce

the computational burden of the control scheme

and provide a higher level of abstraction to their

controllers. However, the computational burden

does not allow the controller to be used easily in a

real time implementation. Another key limitation is

that it is diffi cult to optimize a system that has two

or more variables, such as mileage and emissions, as

this leads to more than one set of rules. Researchers

have used rule based fuzzy logic where it makes use of

fuzzy logic to operate the Internal combustion engine

(ICE) as close to the most effi cient point given the ICE

speed.

Maximum advantage of using Fuzzy Logic can

be seen when using it for adaptive control strategies.

Fuzzy logic when applied to an industrial controller

helps to fi ne tune a PID controller, without the

operator having any a priori knowledge of the system

to be controlled.

An adaptive controller implemented using fuzzy

logic will understand the average behavior of the

respective driver and will optimize itself for these

situations3. Such controllers have been developed by

utilizing a module that would extract information about

the drive cycle and then decide the type of driving that

was taking place at each moment (aggressive, normal,

etc). Based on this information, the algorithm would

change the set of rules used by the main controller.

Fuzzy logic is ideal for non-linear time varying

systems such as a Plug-in hybrid electric vehicle(PHEV)

drive train as they are robust, adaptable to variations,

and easily adjustable. Fuzzy logic controllers reduce

the computational burden and provide a higher level of

abstraction to the controllers that strive to maximize

mileage, electric range and lower emissions.

THEME ARTICLE

Industrial think tank’s approach towards Fuzzy LogicMohammad Saad Alam

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Saginaw Valley State University, University Center,

MI-48710, USA. Email: [email protected]


In the automotive industry, fuzzy logic

has been successfully applied for cruise

control, operation of power electric steering

and electronic variance orifi ce for power

steering fl uid. Fuzzy logic has also been

used in production for throttle control and

also in various functions of anti-lock braking

systems, as well as active and semi-active

suspension control. It has been used in

the automotive HVAC systems as well.

Research is also going on in the area of

Autonomous Vehicle Control using Fuzzy

Logic at automotive industry’s research labs.

Some of the patents fi led for the automotive

applications are:

1. Method and Control System for

Controlling an Automotive HVAC

System to Prevent Fogging, US Patent

5,516,041 1996

2. Method and control system for

adaptively controlling an automotive

HVAC system, Leighton I. Davis et al,

Patent number: 5579994

3. Method and system for modifying a

linear control algorithm which controls

an automotive HVAC system, Leighton

I. Davis et al, Patent number: 5549152

4. Apparatus for controlling a suspension

system disposed between a wheel and

and the body of an automotive vehicle...

Andre Titli et al, Patent number:

5483450

5. Method and system for controlling

an automotive HVAC system to

prevent formation of cabin thermal

stratifi cation, Gerhard Allan Dage et al,

Patent number: 5755378

6. Method and system using fuzzy logic

for controlling a CVT transmission,

Masao Adachi et al, Patent number:

5558596

7. Fuzzy logic device for automatic sound

control, Jean-Philippe Boyer, Patent

number: 5844992

8. Control system for an automotive

vehicle having apparatus for predicting

the Driving Environment of the

Vehicle...Junichi Ishii et al, Patent

number: 5410477

In the emerging area of hybrid, electric

and plug-in hybrid electric vehicular

systems, two critical issues facing the

high voltage battery systems are precise

estimation of the state of the charge of

the battery and balancing of cell voltage in

some advance batteries. Incredible amount

of researches both in the academic as well

as industrial arena is in progress for the

intelligent battery management using fuzzy

logic and neural networks.

In today’s world, the impact of even the

slightest effi ciency improvement plays a key

role in industry, especially the automotive

industry. Fuzzy logic will allow controllers

to be signifi cantly more effi cient and this

improvement will out-weight the added

complexity (vs a deterministic approach)

and cost of its implementation.

References:

1. Jens Jorgen Ostergaard, “ High Level

Process control in the Cement Industry

by Fuzzy logic,” Fuzzy logic Advances

and Applications, World Scientific

Publishing Company, ISBN: 981-02-

3825-8

2. Constantin von Altrock , “Industrial

A p p l i c a t i o n o f F u z z y L o g i c

Control ”,Inform Software Corporation.

Oak Brook, IL

3. E. B. Smith* and R. Langari, “Fuzzy

Multi-Objective Decision Making for

Navigation and Motion Control in

Mobile Robotics,” International Journal

of Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems, Vol.

14, No. 2, pp. 95-108, March 2004

Mohammad Saad Alam received his Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from Aligarh Muslim University, India, in 2003 & Masters in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA in 2005 and PhD in Electrical Engineering from Tennessee Tech University, USA in 2009. He persuaded his post doctoral research as product and development engineer in hybrid and electric vehicle development division of Chrysler Group LLC, USA till August 2010. Currently he is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Saginaw Valley State University, University Center, MI, USA. Dr. Alam’s current teaching and research interests include Alternative energy, Intelligent control of hybrid energy systems, Energy harvesting from environmentally friendly sources such as wind, solar, ocean, geothermal, biomass and agricultural wastes. Energy storage systems such as advanced batteries, ultra capacitors and flywheels, CHP, Hybrid, electric, plug-in hybrid electric and fuel cell vehicles, Distributed generation systems, Stand alone and grid-connected power systems, Smart grid, Energy systems auditing, economic analysis and management.

About the Author

Fuzzy Logic in Home Appliances

Fuzzy logic is used in many appliances and electronics to improve efficiency, conserve energy and make them perform better overall. Washing machines are one of the best examples of how fuzzy logic can make processes more efficient and effective.

Fuzzy logic is making its way to other home appliances. Dishwashers can use fuzzy logic much like a washing machine, determining how much water pressure and detergent will be needed to effectively clean the dishes. It may be used in air conditioners as well, helping cut down energy costs substantially. It is even used in cameras and camcorders to help detect faces and edges, creating clearer and crisper images devoid of common problems like red eye.


Introduction

In real life, interpretation of linguistic knowledge

is a crucial aspect of all working systems. Fuzzy

computing is a powerful mathematical tool to formally

represent and reason with perceptive information.

The strength of Fuzzy computing relies on their

twofold identity: on one hand they are able to handle

linguistic concepts; on the other hand, their universal

approximations are able to perform non linear

mappings between inputs and outputs. In this article,

basic fuzzy methodology for computing of linguistic

knowledge is presented.

Background

A vast amount of information in human

communication involves natural terms which are

often vague and imprecise. This necessitates the

need of linguistic variable which provides systematic

mean for an approximate characterization of

complex phenomena defi ned in natural terms. Fuzzy

logic provides a foundation for the development of

new tools for dealing with natural languages and

knowledge representation and it is one of appropriate

tool to process linguistic variables. A linguistic variable

is defi ned as a variable whose values are sentences

in a natural or artifi cial language. Fuzzy Logic [1] is

acknowledged by its well known fl air for linguistic

concept modeling. Zadeh [2] further extended his

work and applied it to outline a new approach for the

analysis of complex systems and decision process. It

uses the “linguistic” variables in place of numerical

variables, where the relations between variables are

characterized by fuzzy conditional statements and

fuzzy algorithms. The semantic expressivity of fuzzy

Logic (FL), using linguistic variables [3] and linguistic

rules [4], is quite close to expert natural language.

It is observed that linguistic fuzzy knowledge-based

systems, linguistic preparation of information and

linguistic inference procedures are based on the

notion of a linguistic variable [3]. However, the

great utility of linguistic variables is that they can

be modifi ed via linguistic hedges applied to primary

terms [5]. The linguistic hedges can be associated

with certain functions. Hence Fuzzy Computing

can handle qualitative values instead of quantitative

values. It can defi ne knowledge in linguistic variables,

instead of the classical numeric variables, and can

perform computing with these variables, using fuzzy

rules, simulating in a certain way the human reasoning

processes.

Methodology

Each word x in a natural language L may be viewed

as a summarized description of fuzzy subset M(x) of a

universe of discourse (U), with M(x) representing the

meaning of x. In this sense the language as a whole

may be regarded as a system for assigning atomic and

composite labels (i.e. words phrases and sentences)

to the fuzzy subset of U. For example if the meaning

of noun height is fuzzy subset of M(height) and the

meaning of adjective tall is a fuzzy subset M(tall);

then meaning of the noun phrase tall height is given

by intersection of M(height) and M(tall).

Representations of a Linguistic Variable

According to Zadeh [1] (also [6] and [7]), the

defi nition of a linguistic variable can be expressed by

the quintuple: <x_name, L(X), X, G, M> where,

x_name – the name of the linguistic variable, e.g.,

‘temperature’;

X – the universe of discourse, the domain of the

examined variable, e.g. X = [-40, 40] R;

L(X) – the set of linguistic values (terms) that x

_name takes, e.g. L(X) = {low, middle, high};

G – A syntactic rule for generating the names LX

from the term-set L(X);

M – A semantic function that assigns to each

linguistic value LX a fuzzy meaning

M (LX), as a fuzzy subset of X, e.g.:

Procedure to compute linguistic knowledge

Step1: Defi ne fuzzy set on linguistic variables which

enables its values qualitatively in form of linguistic

term. The linguistic term is used to express concept

and knowledge in human communication.

Step2: Calculate numerical value of each linguistic

variable using membership function which describes

it quantitatively.

Step3: Defi ne term set which is set of values in form of

THEME ARTICLE

Computing Linguistic Knowledge using Fuzzy TheoryBindu Garg

School of Computer Engineering, ITM University, HUDA Sector 23-A Gurgaon - 122017. India



words or sentences

Step4: Defi ne fuzzy variable on each value

of term set.

Step5: Defi ne base variable as universe of

discourse on all fuzzy variables in term set

Step6: Perform characterization of simple

relation between fuzzy variables by

conditional statements: relation between

two fuzzy variables x and y in form of “IF A

then B”

Step7: Compute fuzzifi ed output

Step8: Defuzzifi cation of fuzzy in crisp

output

Linguistic variable � Fuzzy variable � base variable� Fuzzy Rules� Fuzzy�Crisp value

Conclusion

Computing of linguistic knowledge

using fuzzy is strictly mathematical

framework in which vague conceptual

phenomena can be precisely and rigorously

studied. Human information processing

is mainly based on linguistic knowledge.

This article presents basic procedure for

comuting of linguistic knowledge. So the

main advantage of using linguistic terms

even with vague ranges is the intuitive

interpretability of linguistic rules.

Future work

There are still several challenging

problem dealing with linguistic knowledge

like learning paradigm. The fuzzy system

together with learning algorithm in

dealing with real world problem should be

investigated.

References

[1] L. A. Zadeh, “Fuzzy sets,” Information

and Control, vol. 8, pp. 338–353, 1965.

[2] L. A. Zadeh, Outline of a new approach

to the analysis of complex systems and

decision processes, IEEE Transactions

on Systems, Man and Cybernetics

SMC-3, 28-44, 1973.

[3] L. A. Zadeh, “The concept of a

linguistic variable and its application to

approximate reasoning,” Parts I, II, and

III. Information Sciences, vol. 8, 8, 9, pp.

199–249, 301–357, 43–80, 1975

[4] E. H. Mamdani, “Application of fuzzy

logic to approximate reasoning using

linguistic systems,” IEEE Trans. on

Computers, vol. 26(12), pp. 1182–1191,

1977.

[5] B o u c h o n - M e u n i e r , B . L A F O R I A ,

Linguistic hedges and fuzzy logic, IEEE

International Conference on Fuzzy

Systems, 1992. pp- 247 – 254

[6] 2. Nakoula S., Galichet S., Foulloy

L.: Identification of Linguistic Fuzzy

Models Based on Learning, In:

Hellendoorn H., Driankov D. (eds):

Fuzzy Model Identifi cation; Selected

Approaches. Springer-Verlag, Berlin

Heidelberg (1997) 281-319.

[7] 8. Kacprzyk J.: Fuzzy Sets in System

Analysis (in Polish). PWN, Warsaw

(1986).

Workshop on

Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing C-DAC Kharghar, Navi Mumbai, December 01-04, 2010

http://bidw.cdacmumbai.in

About Workshop

Workshop on Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing

intents to provide a comprehensive overview in the fi eld of

Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing with hands-on

practical experience on tools like Weka, Mondrian and Kettle.

The workshop will also provide an opportunity for interactions

among the participants from different academic institutions,

research organizations and industry practitioners in India. We

plan to invite distinguished researchers and professionals to

give keynote lectures in emerging Business Intelligence and

Data Warehousing technologies.

Proposed Structure of Workshop

• Invited talks covering current trends, specifi c challenges,

Technologies etc in BIDW

• Hands-on sessions on BIDW tools

Registration Details

Registration opens on: 11th October 2010

Last Date: 15th November 2010

Fee:

Participants 4 Day 2 Day Early Bird

Professionals INR 8000 INR 4000 INR 7000

Students INR 6000 INR 3000 INR 5000

CSI Members INR 6000 INR 3000 INR 5000

All payments should be made by a Demand Draft drawn in

favour of “C-DAC Mumbai” payable at Mumbai. For online

Registration & other details please visit workshop website :

http://bidw.cdacmumbai.in

Contact:

BIDW Secretariat, CDAC

Raintree Marg, Sector 7, CBD Belapur,

Navi Mumbai 400 614, Maharashtra, INDIA

Telephone:+91-22-27565303/04/05

Fax: +91-22-27565004


The Internet is based on a layered, end-to-end model that allows people at each level of the network to innovate free of any central control. By placing intelligence at the edges rather than control in the middle of the network, the Internet has created a platform for innovation.

- Vinton Cerf

The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn’t understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.

- Eric Schmidt


Originally, the word computing was synonymous

with counting and reckoning, and a computer was an

expert at calculation. In the 1950s with the advent of

the (electronic) computer, the meaning of the word

computing was broadened to include the operation

and use of these machines, the processes carried out

within the computer hardware itself, and the theoretical

concepts governing them. These theoretical concepts

fi nd their roots in the Turing machine [1], that is,

a conceptual computing device that was devised

by Alan Turing, the great British logician, in the mid

1930s. In essence, Turing showed that computation is

a process of symbol manipulation, since his machine

is dully processing symbols that are printed on a tape.

More specifi cally, a Turing machine consists of paper

tape divided into cells and a scanning head that moves

across the tape and can read and write symbols on

each cell. At any given moment, a machine is in a

state. Depending on the state the machine is and the

contents of the cell that is currently being scanned by

the scanning head, the machine enters a new state

and either replaces the contents of the cell or moves

to the cell that is either to the left or to the right of

the cell being scanned. At each moment, the machine

consults the controlling device to determine what to

do next. By using a technique, which was developed

by Kurt Gödel, the famous Austrian mathematician,

Turing had shown that it is possible to “construct”

a universal machine, which would take as input the

specifi cation of a machine together with its input, that

is capable of solving a great number of problems. The

importance of this universal machine is so great that

some thinkers claim that modern computers are in

fact realizations of it. However, this claim is clearly

an exaggeration as modern computers are able to

interact whereas Turing machines do not interact

with their environment.

Despite the fact that the Turing machine is not

the only model of computation, still it is the most

widely known model. There are other models that

equally interesting. For example, P systems [2], which

have been proposed by Gheorghe P un, is a model of

computation inspired by the way living cells function.

Basically, a P system is structure that consists of nested,

porous membranes that contain indistinguishable

copies of objects. Attached to each compartment is

a set of rewrite rules, that is, equations that roughly

specify how the contents of a compartment should be

modifi ed (strictly speaking, a rewrite rule is a method

to transform a character string into a new one; for

example, the Unix sed utility is a program that allows

users to implement simple rewrite rules). In particular,

such rules may specify that copies of certain objects

should be deleted or moved to another compartment

or that copies of objects should be introduced from

outside or be created out of thin air. Rules are applied

in parallel in such a way that only optimal output is

generated. When there is no more activity, the result

of the computation is equal to the number of (copies

of the) objects found in a designated compartment—

the output compartment. P systems operate in a

massively parallel way while they can interact with

their environment.

A basic assumption of both Turing machines and

P systems is that all operations are exact. In different

words, vagueness is taken seriously into account. It is

true that there are probabilistic versions of both Turing

machines and P systems, but this is not the kind of

vagueness that offers a new insight. On the other had,

although fuzziness is basic expression of vagueness,

still its use in models of computation is largely ignored

by most computers scientists. But what exactly is

fuzziness?

THEME ARTICLE

Computing in a Fuzzy EnvironmentApostolos Syropoulos

366, 28th October Str., GR-671 00 Xanthi, GREECE. Email: [email protected]

Web-page at http://obelix.ee.duth.gr/~apostolo

Fuzzy set theory is a mathematical theory about vagueness, which is a fundamental propery of this world. Some believe that fuziness is a just one facet of vagueness, but some other believe that it is the only expression of vagueness. Despite of this, most models of computation ignore vagueness and “exist” in an exact and defectless world. And this assumption has affected the way real computers are being built. By introducing fuzziness to models of computation, one aims to develop models of computation that are closer to reality. The text that follows is a brief survey of some fuzzy models of computation.


Fuzzy set theory was developed by

Lotfi A. Zadeh [3] who had the ingenious

idea to defi ne an extension of the notion of

a set where elements belong to a degree. In

particular, given a collection of objects, one

can assign a membership degree, which is

usually a number greater or equal to zero

or less than or equal to one, to each object

to form a fuzzy subset of this collection. As

a concrete example, consider a group of

people. Then we can form the fuzzy subset

of tall people of this group. Depending on

the height of the people and our knowledge

of the height of people, in general, one can

form this fuzzy subset. In the most general

case, one can argue that the membership

degrees are not algorithmic in nature. On

the contrary, one could say that they are

based on the subjective judgement of some

expert.

Fuzzy sets have been successfully

used in various applications and that is

why they are particularly “popular” among

engineers. However, not everyone shares

this enthusiasm. Indeed, there are many

thinkers who believe that statements like

Serena is tall to a degree of 0.70 are basically

elementary mistakes of logic. These thinkers

propose that statements like this can be

rephrased as Serena is 70% tall and in this

case the statement is either true or false

In the fi rst statement we actually say that

Serena is tall and the truth degree of this

statement is 0.70, where 1 denotes absolute

truth. The interesting thing is that one can

use statements like this in (fuzzy) inference

rules to make deductions, something not

possible with the exact statement above. In

other words, the real difference between the

two approaches is in the denotation of the

two statements.

Zadeh believes that probability

theory and fuzzy set theory are rather

complementary in that one can use fuzzy

sets in cases where probability theory is

not useful and vice versa. Others believe

that fuzzy set theory is more fundamental

than probability theory and randomness.

Interestingly, the recent proof of the “Free

Will Theorem” by John Horton Conway

and Simon Kochen has revealed that [I]

f experimenters have a certain property, then

spin 1 particles have exactly the same property.

Since this property for experimenters is an

instance of what is usually called “free will” we

fi nd it appropriate to use the same term also

for particles [4, p. 1444]. Interestingly, they

derived their result without using probability

theory or randomness, while they conclude

that randomness is not needed. But this

does not exclude vagueness as a property

of this world, thus, fuzziness can be used to

reason about vague things. These remarks

make it clear that models of computation

based on fuzzy set theory are closer to reality

than anything else. In the rest of this article,

I will briefl y present fuzzy Turing machines

and fuzzy P systems, which are the most

promising models of fuzzy computation.

Fuzzy Turing Machines Eugene S.

Santos [5] is the fi rst researcher who

formalized fuzzy Turing machines. However,

it was Zadeh that spoke fi rst about fuzzy

algorithms [6]. In the most general case,

a fuzzy Turing machine is one where the

transition from one confi guration (i.e.,

the state the machine is together with the

information regarding the cell that is being

scanned and the information contained in

the cell) to another confi guration (i.e., the

new state that the machine enters, what has

been written in the cell and which direction

the scanning head has moved) is associated

with truth degree. In the end, a fuzzy Turing

machine computes a result with some

plausibility degree. The important question

concerning fuzzy Turing machines is whether

they can solve problems that their non-

fuzzy counterparts cannot. Indeed, there are

problems that cannot be solved using Turing

machines. For example, due to Turing’s work

on the halting problem, we know that when

a program gets stalled, a computer program

cannot say whether it has entered an infi nite

loop or not. Now, Jiří Wiedermann [7],

has shown that fuzzy Turing machines can

solve problems that cannot be solved by

an ordinary Turing machine. In particular,

it seems that fuzzy Turing machines can

decide whether problems like Goldbach's

conjecture is true or not. This conjecture

asks whether every even integer greater

than 2 is a Goldbach number, that is, a

number that can be expressed as the sum

of two primes. Naturally, one may ask why

we do not use them to solve such problems.

The answer is very simple: we need to

program the machine to solve the problem!

Thus, what Wiedermann claims is that

we can program the machine to solve the

problem but he does not offer a solution to

any particular problem. Stricktly speaking,

Wiedermann claims that fuzzy Turing

machines are actually hypermachines [8],

that is, machines that can solve problems no

Turing machine can solve.

Fuzzy P Systems Since vagueness is

basic property of our world, it makes sense

to expect biological systems to be vague.

Thus, a fuzzy version of P systems is model

of computation that is closer to reality.

Fuzzy P systems have been introduced

by this author [9]. In order to explain how

these systems operate, it is necessary to say

a few things about fuzzy multisets and fuzzy

rewrite rules.

A multiset [10] is as generalization

of the concept of a set. While ordinary

sets contain different elements, a multiset

contains copies of different elements. For

example, {1,1,2,2,2,3,4,4,,4} is a multiset

that contains two copies of “1,” three copies

of “2,” one copy of “3,” and three copies of

“4.” Typically, it is assumed that the number

of copies is fi nite. Fuzzy multisets have been

introduced by Ronald R. Yager [12]. In fact

they are generalization of both ordinary

sets and multisets—different number of

copies of elements may belong to different

degrees. This means, that it is possible to

have three copies of element “x” where

each of them belongs to the set with degree

0.62 and seven copies of “x” that belong

to the set with degree 0.81! Although this

may seem weird, still it is quite possible to

fi nd real world examples where this makes

sense. Nevertheless, for our purpose we

need a restricted form of fuzzy multisets,

that I have coined mutli-fuzzy sets, where it

is possible to have only one set of copies

for each element that, naturally, belong

to the set to a degree. Usually, the term

cardinality refers to the number of elements

of some set. In the case of a multi-fuzzy set,

the cardinality is the sum of all element

occurrences, where for each element the

occurrence is the product of the number of

copies of this element times its membership

degree. Now, a fuzzy rewrite rule is one that

it is possible (not probable!) to transform

a character string into another one with a

specifi c plausibility degree.

Suppose that we have a membrane

structure and each compartment is

populated with a multi-fuzzy set. In

addition, assume that each compartment is

associated with a fi nite number of multiset

rewriting rules. Assume that the degree

to which the n copies of a belong to a

designated compartment A is i; also the

degree to which the m copies of a belong

to a designated compartment B is j. If there

is a rule that moves as from A to B, then,

after using this rule, the degree to which

the compartment B will contain a multi-

fuzzy set with n + m copies of as will be

equal to max{i, j} (i.e., we sum up the two

multi-fuzzy sets). In the end, the result of

the computation is equal to the cardinality

of the output compartment. P systems with

fuzzy data produce, in general, real positive

numbers and so, unexpectedly, extend their

computational power.

The following picture depicts a simple

example of P system with fuzzy data:


This P system contains n objects in

compartment 1, which will be transferred

into compartment 2. The cardinality of the

multi-fuzzy set contained in compartment

2 is equal to n/m. Thus, the result of this

particular computation is a positive rational

number. However, there is nothing that

prevents one from computing any real

number, if we assume that objects may

have real numbers as membership degrees.

Indeed, the following theorem makes this

explicit:

Theorem. P systems with fuzzy data can

compute any positive real number.

By replacing the ordinary rewrite rules

with fuzzy rewrite rules, a result is computed

with some plausibility degree and this

makes things even more interesting. The

computational power of these machines is

an open problem.

Given a fuzzy set and element may

belong to it with degree μ while it does

not belong to the set with degree that is

equal to 1-μ. Krassimir T. Atanassov [13]

has proposed an interesting extension to

fuzzy sets: sets where the non-membership

degree is an “arbitrary” number ν such

that 0 < μ + ν < 1. These structures are

known as intuitionistic fuzzy sets, but the

term intuitionistic is a misnomer since

these structures have nothing to do with

intuitionistic mathematics. Clearly, one

can defi ne the corresponding extension of

multi-fuzzy sets and show their properties

(see [14] for details). This author has

defi ned P systems that are populated with

“intuitionistic” multi-fuzzy sets [15]. It is

possible to go further in the generalization

ladder to defi ne really general multi-fuzzy

sets and fuzzy P systems (see [17] for more

details).

Apart from fuzzy models of

computation, one can defi ne fuzzy models

of concurrency that better explain what

happens in reality. For example, processes in

a system can be modeled by fuzzy multisets,

where the membership degree denotes the

degree to which a process is similar to a

prototype process that consumes minimal

resources. Next, one can defi ne fuzzy

evolution rules that “specify” how a system

evolves (see [18] a presentation of this

idea).

Epilogue Despite its age, the fi eld of

fuzzy computing is relatively immature

since many ideas have been developed the

last few years. This means that students

and researchers who are looking for a new

exciting research should consider doing a

research project in fuzzy computing!

References [1] Turing, A. M. On Computable

Numbers, with an application to the

Entscheidungsproblem. Proceedings of

the London Mathematical Society 42

(1936), 230–265.

[2] Păun, G. Membrane Computing: An

Introduction. Springer-Verlag, Berlin,

2002.

[3] Zadeh, L. A. Fuzzy Sets. Information and

Control 8 (1965), 338–353.

[4] Connway, J. H., and Kochen, S. The Free

Will Theorem. Foundations of Physics

36, 10 (2006), 1441–1473.

[5] Santos, E. S. Fuzzy Algorithms.

Information and Control 17 (1970),

326–339.

[6] Zadeh, L. A. Fuzzy Algorithms.

Information and Control 12 (1968),

94–102.

[7] Wiedermann, J. Characterizing the

super-Turing computing power and

efficiency of classical fuzzy Turing

machines. Theoretical Computer

Science 317 (2004), 61–69.

[8] Syropoulos, A. Hypercomputation:

Computing Beyond the Church-Turing

Barrier. Springer New York, Inc.,

Secaucus, NJ, USA, 2008.

[9] Syropoulos, A. Fuzzifying P Systems.

The Computer Journal 49, 5 (2006),

619–628.

[10] Syropoulos, A. Mathematics of

Multisets. In Calude et al. [10], pages

347–358.

[11] Cristian S. Calude, Gheorghe P un,

Grzegorz Rozenberg, and Arto Salomaa,

editors. Multiset Processing, number

2235 in Lecture Notes in Computer

Science, Berlin, 2001. Springer-Verlag.

[12] Yager, R. R. On the theory of bags. Int.

J. General Systems, 13 (1986), 23–37.

[13] Atanassov, K. T. Intuitionistic fuzzy sets.

Fuzzy sets and Systems 20, 1 (1986),

87–96.

[14] Syropoulos, A. On Nonsymmetric

Multi-Fuzzy Sets. Critical Review

IV(2010), 35–41.

[15] Syropoulos, A. Intuitionistic Fuzzy P

Systems, submitted for publication

2010.

[16] Syropoulos, A. On Generalized Fuzzy

Multisets and their Use in Computation,

submitted for publication 2010.

[17] Syropoulos, A. On Generalized Fuzzy

Multisets and their Use in Computation.

A preliminary version is available form

http://ppage.psystems.eu/index.php/

Papers

[18] Syropoulos, A. Fuzzy Chemical Abstract

Machines, arXiv:0903.3513v1 [cs.FL],

2009.


HR COLUMN

Pragmatics of “Hire-Fire” in IndiaHastha Krishnan

Director & President, Ma Foi Randstad, No. 49, Cathedral Road, Chennai - 600 086, India.


For the Indian industry, in particular the software

industry and other service providers, it is a critical need

to possess the fl exibility and freedom of hiring the best

of human resources and fi ring the non performers.

While we justify the forced exit of employees who

are either not performing or causing disciplinary

issues, we also need to ensure that employees work

with independence in a secure environment without

having to worry about how the land lies the next

day at work. HR in India is yet uncomfortable with

issuing the pink slip. Terminations due to HR issues

or work based problems are few and far between. The

recession period did witness the fastest fi ring exercise

because organizations had to downsize to survive.

However, downsizing was euphemistically termed as

right sizing, which in a way was right too. Companies

realized that the elegance of employee engagement

did not focus on care and concern alone; it has to

focus on talent optimization and performance levels.

To achieve this, pruning in terms of removing those

who did not meet performance expectations and

those who professed a negative and diffi dent attitude

was unavoidable. The worry was – will fi ring send the

right signal to employees about survival of the best

or will it upset the applecart and cause insecurity

across the workforce? Absence of a viable and clearly

evolved exit policy at times prevents Corporates from

trimming the employee base.

The Indian industry works on the emotional

bond more than the legal boundaries. Retrenchment

or layoffs, therefore, are tantamount to breakdown

of trust and faith between the management and the

member. Though the Industrial Disputes Act (IDA)

provides for temporary as well as permanent reduction

of workforce based on business needs, termination

policies lack clarity. Private organizations draw up

their own human resource policies based on legalities

of employer-employee relationships. However,

organizations are reluctant to be transparent about

the reasons behind fi ring. Most often, the process

is done subtly and sensitively so that the rest of the

organization does not speculate on the root cause

of termination. Several organizations seek voluntary

separation as the only method of shedding excessive

manpower. Forced exits convey certain callousness

on the part of the management and this can, if wrongly

perceived, cause damage to the organization’s image.

But, terminating an employee because of indiscipline,

ethical issues or continued bad performance is a

requirement if the organization promotes employee

growth and development. Focus on the ones that

contribute is far more productive than futile efforts to

retain non performing resources. As a policy, this will

send a healthy signal that the organization not only

rewards performance but also penalizes the lack of it.

The Indian IT industry does not consider itself part

of the industrial establishment, lest it should adhere

to the stringent norms of the hire and fi re policy. The

business in software is deeply dynamic and hence

most medium sized companies face ups and downs

depending on the projects on hand and in the pipeline.

At times, even with confi rmed assignments, delay in

project launch can cause fi nancial crisis. Therefore

IT companies hire just-in-time and on contract basis

at least in the fi rst year of engagement. Termination

of contract can be on a minimum notice period or

compensation in lieu of notice period.

The Western world handles hiring and fi ring as

a way of life. Temping is therefore fairly common as

people pick up jobs that come their way. Long term job

security, employee loyalty are all things of past. There

is no mix between work and life and people handle both

aspects with equanimity. Job benefi ts are far more

important than career prospects. The transition from

steady jobs to available and short term assignments

is slowly happening in India. Flexi staffi ng, interim

management positions and assignment based job

opportunities fi nd many a taker, who is looking to

add value to his experience and in the meanwhile, be

employed.

Temp staffi ng is a growing trend and India

is catching up fast. The IT industry has found the

solution now to the expensive bench policy. Software

organizations can augment their employee base

during the peak period of a project life cycle and

maintain a core employee strength during the lean

phases. This workforce fl exibility has helped in dealing

with the changes in the market and customer needs,

and the available talent pool. Of course, freshers

benefi t largely from temp staffi ng as they are provided

short term job opportunities which will lend them the

work experience that is so essential while seeking

permanent positions in large organizations.

The recent recession has driven home


HASTHA KRISHNAN currently heads the Executive Search business of Ma Foi Randstad. In the past 16 years,

she has held a number of key positions within the organization and was heading Ma Foi’s Europe operations. In

addition to heading Executive Search business, she is also responsible for the International Key Accounts. Prior

to joining Ma Foi, Hastha was a freelance market research consultant for eight years.

About the Author

the advantages of maintaining a lean

organization. Several corporates were stuck

between a bloated workforce on the one

hand, and less or virtually no business on

the other. Human Resource department

was faced with the traumatic task of letting

go of unproductive workforce, who in turn

resisted the move and became diffi dent.

Wage bills were brought down and with

that came the need to continuously deal

with complacency amongst the employees

with regard to growth and development.

Organizations have realized that right

sizing is the best way to go. Effective and

productive employee strength will help

focus on profi ts and in times of economic

downturn, maintain the head above water.

There is no midway to maintain a lean

employee base. To do this, organizations

must be fair and objective to employees

across levels. It is unhealthy to adopt

the easier path of retrenchment by fi ring

the junior workers alone. The payroll will

yet be heavy as the middle management

strength is maintained and the work output

not assessed to help take fi ring decisions.

It is not uncommon for the employers

to feel guilty about the pink slip process

for managers. Although there are no soft

options to handle the painful procedure

of retrenching unproductive managers,

it will do well to keep in mind that for an

organization to be knocked into shape and

fi tness, the fl ab has to be removed where

ever it has been spotted.

Outplacement as an alternative has

been adopted by many companies as

this minimizes the perceived insensitivity

and does not spill too much bad blood.

Employees who have been exited are

transitioned into new jobs available in

the market through placement agencies.

Retraining and orientation is provided by the

former employer to upskill the individuals so

that they qualify for employment in other

organizations. In addition, the placement

consultancies which help fi nd jobs are

also adept at counselling and providing

psychological support to the candidates.

As a move from such reactive measures

to proactive management, organizations

are implementing robust methods to pin

point poor performers and identify and

nurture employees who are contributing

to the business growth. A simple but

effective HR technique is the traffi c signal

method. The employees are forced ranked

into 3 bands. The super performers and

consistent achievers come under green

and the organization resolves to go all out

to retain these people. Under amber, are

those who are good to have in the system;

they show consistency although have no

spectacular achievements to their credit.

Objective would be to explore how they can

be groomed to become high performers.

The organization is aware that as long as

they are in the team, they are good even

if they do not demonstrate potential for

growth. The reds are probably the result

of hiring mistakes, bad management or

negative attitude. They are trouble makers,

de-motivators and, if not let go of at the

earliest, can prove to be the nemesis of the

organization. To keep the 3 bands active and

updated, sound performance management

systems, monthly review meetings,

constant monitoring and regular feedback

from customers need to be managed by

the business and HR bosses. Training and

performance improvement measures will

bridge any gaps that get noticed between

expected and achieved results.

While we say that non performers are

identifi ed and let go of, we fail to see that

most often performance lacks because the

employee is not the right fi t for the job. This

fi tment of mapping the responsibilities to the

individual’s competencies is done during the

job interview. Interviewers need to look for

behavioral indicators that demonstrate the

presence of the skills required to perform the

job. An interview, if not handled well can give

room for two types of errors – not identifying

the right candidate and the more serious

error of choosing the wrong candidate. The

loss is notional in the former but irreversible

in the latter. It is only now that Corporate

India is moving out of the fatalistic stance

about hiring. A star performer is not a boon

to the company nor is a bad employee a

curse. If the recruitment process is robust

and the candidate assessed clearly on what

is expected of him/her, hiring becomes a

scientifi c exercise and does not depend on

individual decisions.

Diligent recruitment processes, clear

performance metrics and healthy employee

engagement render the management of

people and business effective, progressive

and profi table.

HumorHelpdesk : Sir, you need to add 10GB space to your HD

Customer : Could you please tell where I can download that?

Unix is user friendly...its just selective about who its friends are to err is human...to really foul up requires the root password.

You have successfully hacked in, Welcome to the FBI mainframes.


IDEAS & OPINIONS

Teaching Information Systems: The Generation GapNilay M Yajnik

Professor and Chairman - Information Systems Area, Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies,

Juhu Vile Parle Scheme, Vile Parle (West),. Mumbai 400 056, India.

E-mail: [email protected], [email protected]

I attended the Computer Society of India Annual

Convention in Chennai in the year 2000. I remember one

of the keynote speeches at this Convention was given by

Dr. Natarajan, who was the then Director of the Indian

Institute of Technology Madras (Chennai).I remember

Dr. Natarajan started by saying that the generation of

today has never seen a typewriter, never seen a steam

engine locomotive train, hardly sends conventional

letters and thinks that a response to an email in a day is

much too long! I remember after I heard Dr. Natarajan’s

speech I started to refl ect on my own experiences.

I graduated in Instrumentation Engineering from

the Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani

(BITS Pilani) in 1983. When I joined BITS Pilani in 1978

the Indian IT industry , as it is known today , had hardly

been born. And yet we had a course called “Introduction

to Microprocessors” where we studied the Intel 8085

and then the 8086. My Professor Dr. A P Mathur ‘s book

(which became a standard text book in almost all major

engineering colleges later) was class tested on my batch.

In 2008 , exactly 30 years later , I went to BITS Pilani to

deliver a guest lecture – and it was in the same classroom

that Prof Mathur taught me! In 1978 there was no STD

facility in Pilani so we as students had to book a call at

the campus post offi ce. But when I talked to the students

I became aware and conscious of the fact that these

students were the Internet, Google and Smartphone

generation – something which I had never heard of or

imagined in 1978.Such a huge gap in just 30 years!

Then in 1986, after three years of industry

experience I went back to study to complete my Masters

in Management Studies from the University of Mumbai

(through NMIMS).And now as I teach my students of

MBA in the same Institute. I keep thinking of life as a

student and now as a Professor. In 1986 the difference

between me and my Professors with respect to our

usage of various tools was not much. My project work

for my MBA was done on a typewriter and so was theirs

when they were students. I had been through the pain

of usage of the conventional telephone and so had

they. I had traveled in steam engine trains and so had

they. My interface with the outside world was through

letters sent through the post offi ce and so was theirs.

However, as Dr. Natarajan had mentioned, my own

students have never seen or used these tools. So the gap

between me and my students is much wider than the

gap between me and my Professors. I think this is one

of the biggest challenges that we , especially Information

Systems teachers face today. While the basic concepts in

Information Systems remain the same , the applications

of IS change very rapidly. As an example just some 2 to 3

years ago I used to talk about how extended ERP systems

enable shopping to be done through laptops. And now

there is a report that the smartphones will overtake

laptops in just 2 years! The SDLC concepts remain

unchanged but the new focus is on requirements analysis

.While my Professors at the MBA level focused more on

EDP and MIS in the mid 1980’s I have to focus more on

strategy and implementation of strategy in my IS classes

today.

So if I have to teach IS to Generation Next, I have

to necessarily be Generation Next ++. Therefore as

IS teachers it becomes even more challenging. This

challenge was not so acute in my Professors’ time.

Therefore we IS teachers should remain contemporary

and continuously upgrade our skills with an element

of “paranoia.”. As Andy Grove of Intel had said once

“Only the Paranoid Survive.” So we Information Systems

teachers must update our knowledge of the latest in

technology and its applications with a healthy “paranoia”.

Only then will we be able to keep up and do justice to our

students – the Generation Next.

The Higher Education Forum of India has awarded Dr. Nilay M Yajnik “Outstanding Contribution to the Teaching Profession”. This award was presented to Dr. Nilay Yajnik on Teacher’s Day , September 5th 2010 at the worldwide headquarters of Zensar Ltd. in Pune.The Higher Education Forum of India is one of India’s largest and most prestigious associations for Teachers and Academics involved in the field of higher education. The association has around 2,200 members from all over India and a few from abroad as well. Many of India’s top policy makers in the field of higher education are associated with this Forum.


SPECIAL SECTION

Welcome to CSI 2010M D Agrawal

Vice President & President – Elect, Computer Society of India, BPCL Quarters, Flat No. 21, Near Asian Heart

Hospital, Bandra Kurla Compelx, Mumbai 400051. Email : [email protected]

Dear Colleagues & Friends,

On behalf of the CSI Executive committee and

Organizing committee, I extend a warm welcome to

CSI 2010, the 45th Annual National Convention to be

held from 25-27th November, 2010 at Mumbai.

The theme for this year’s Convention is

“Technologies for the Next decade” and it is designed

to cover various aspects of current and future

Trends of ICT and related areas. Preparations for this

Convention are in advanced stage.

Organizing such a mega event demands lot of

meticulous planning. We are thankful to Mumbai

Chapter Management committee and Organizing

Committee Chair Shri. Rajiv Gerela for their tireless

efforts.

Dr. Atanu took up the key role of Program

committee chairman and Dr. Chandwani assisted as

program committee Co-chair. Program committee

decided that CSI 2010 shall present foresight vision

on various aspects of ICT, ESPECIALLY FUTURIST

DEVELOPMENTS FOR NEXT DECADE and their key

deliverables to business and society. Since Internet

(i) is bringing paradigm shift in IT solutions and

infrastructure, a well thought 8 TRACK PROGRAM

was designed covering sub themes of New ‘I’

ARCHITECURE under cloud computing , Internet

based ‘I’SOLUTIONS, Infrastructure challenges under

‘I’CONNECT, ENTERPRISE SOLITIONS, ICT role for

societal transformation and role of ‘I’ENTERPRENEUR

for growth of IT . Special sessions are planned for

deliberations on new RESEARCH in ICT, Education

& Research. A team of high profi le veterans from IIT

Mumbai, Prof. Umesh Bellur, Prof. Anirudh Joshi, Prof.

Abhay Karanidikar and Leading CIOs of Mumbai have

extended their valuable help to derive and design the

program structure. With their involvement, so far, 60

senior SPEAKERS have signed up for CSI 2010. The list

will be published shortly. The Conference committee

appreciate timely help from Prof. N L Sarda

for pursuading his colleagues from IIT , Mumbai

for taking Lead Role as Track Chairs.

Thanks are due to our Conference Chair, Shri

Mahalingam for his moral support and valuable

Guidance time to time. Convention preparation has

received a good care and support from President Prof

Thrimurthy and from all EXECOM members and HQ

staff.

With the help of our CSI fellows, Dr. Bagga

and Mr. M R Datar, few sessions are also lined up

under e-governance track, where deliberations will

be carried out on UID project. Presentation of CSI

Nihilent E-governance awards will be a part of

convention program, showcasing CSI leadership

for E-governance initiatives of various government

agencies, state governments and central ministries.

CSI has a rich tradition of recognizing

outstanding contributions of members for driving

key activities and technical programs throughout the

year. CSI also recognizes Key achievers instrumental

in development & deployment of ICT solutions in

different domains, through CSI IT excellence awards.

Thanks to HQ & Education Directorate staff, all

Chapter Chairmen and Shri. Anil Srivastava for their

efforts.

Despite high cost of logistics and 5-star hotel

expenses, Convention registration fees have been

kept within affordable limits to delegates, with special

concessions to CSI members and Academicians.

I am sure, CSI 2010 will offer an excellent

learning opportunity for participants - CEOs, CIOs,

CSI Members, senior offi cers from state, central

government and organizations, Academicians, CXOs,

IT Managers, Corporate staff and others. It is also

expected to open up new avenues for thought in

Partnership & branding to IT companies and corporate

companies.

The Rich cultural heritage of Mumbai and the

unequalled ambience of Hotel Taj Lands End, with

proximity to a beautiful beach - Band Stand at Bandra

East of Mumbai will surely offer a pleasant and

memorable experience to participants.

The event will be a good occasion to the

diversifi ed CSI family to come together at one

forum besides providing an opportunity to show case

the rich heritage of CSI and network with peers and

friends.

For full details, please visit the convention web

site www.csi-2010.org.

So grab the opportunity and Register for it today.

Warm regards.

M D Agrawal

Conference Ambassador


The year 2010, marks the dawn of a new

decade and hope - introducing us to radically new

opportunities, trends, technologies, challenges

and ever growing base of demanding tech savvy

consumers. The 45th Annual national convention

organized by Computer Society of India during 25-27

November’2010, defi nes a roadmap for the strategic

deployment of New Technologies for the Next

Decade. New Technologies for the Next Decade

will impact the business, society and our country in

this internet age to align with the iGeneration to be

popularly called iGen. iGen is leading and is redefi ning

the way we do business, collaborate and interact with

each other in a synergetic convergence environment. This will create signifi cant impact in the societal

aspects.

In recent times there are landmark enhancements

in computing science, software development

architecture and in telecommunication spheres.

These enhancements have created signifi cant impact

in solution approaches, solution architecture, service

model, reachability and device fl exibilities to meet the

need of true user groups of urban and rural India. The

effective and innovative usage of these enhancements

and solution approaches can benefi t the society at

large for its inclusive growth.

Today IT is being viewed as the fi fth utility

service. The recent few years witnessed a paradigm

shift in the way parallel and distributed systems have

evolved. In parallel computing environments there

is signifi cant evolution from single CPU systems

to Multi CPU, Symmetric processing to Multi-core

system. System software also enhanced to support

this parallel computing environment. Further, there

can be challenging environment co-existing with

CPU and GPU. In distributed computing environment,

there is signifi cant evolution from distributed system

to cluster system to Grid Computing. Further it has

enhanced to Cloud Computing. The Cloud Computing

has provided an environment which is primarily a

distributed system with central management to

provide Green, Economical, fl exible, on-demand

capabilities to support IaaS, PaaS, SaaS and many

more. Economies of scale have driven “cloud

computing” to the forefront where computing and

software is served as a utility much like power. This

has created a challenging environment for solution

provider and application architect. In system design

architecture there had been signifi cant evolution

from monolithic system to structure programming

to client/server system to n-tier system to object-

oriented system to component based system. Today

is the era of service– oriented system. This has given

new dimension to the system which is fl exible, loosely

coupled, collaborative and agile. The system can

be built for change rather than performance only.

The Governance concept especially IT Governance

and SOA Governance has become more and more

important in this loosely coupled, fl exible and

collaborative environment. The signifi cant aspect

of Service-Oriented System is its distributiveness.

Hence the strong thread between multi-core, Cloud

Computing and SOA is the ‘Distributed System’.

Further, this synergetic environment not only create

huge amount of data but also access large data size on

the fl y. Real data management is the need of the day

starting from data fabric to predictive support. These

aspects have provided the creative and innovative

environment for solution architect, solution provider,

IT Researcher and IT Educationists.

In telecommunication domain, wireless networks

are rapidly becoming a part of our everyday life. The

widespread availability of miniature wireless devices

such as PDAs, cellular phones, pocket PCs, and

sensors are one step towards making the vision of

anywhere, anytime pervasive access and computing

a reality. Cellular 2G/3G networks are true examples

of such mobile communication systems. Convergence

is redefi ning the boundaries of data, voice and

video services. The evolution of 2G technologies

to 3G and 4G poses interesting technological

and business challenges, as the deployment of

broadband networks grows aggressively. As

multiple technologies such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi,

SPECIAL SECTION

The CSI Annual Convention’2010– OverviewAtanu Rakshit

Chairman, Program Committee, Deputy Director, International Institute of Information Technology, B-9,

Nalanda Apartments, Niligiri Lane, Baner Road, Aundh, Pune 411 007. Email: [email protected]


WiMAX are deployed, service providers

are focusing on revenue enhancement

opportunities by offering Multiplay and

other applications over broadband wired and

wireless networks. The great success of the

Internet and wireless communications has

opened a new vista for future all-IP wireless

applications, driven by increasing

demand for packet data services in

worldwide 2.5G and 3G networks. It

has been envisioned that the future

wireless systems will be operating

based mainly on burst data services

carrying multimedia contents, including

voice, data, image and video. Such

increasing demand for multimedia

communication drives the development

of consumer and enterprise markets

as well as the evolution of wireless

technologies. The support of

multimedia is believed to be one of the

pre-requisites to guarantee the success

of the IMS based next generation

wireless networks. The emerging 4G

technologies like LTE-Advanced and IEEE

802.11m WiMAX, the cognitive radio, and

Femtocells are going to change complete

paradigm of the wireless communication

and access.

In the fi eld of Computing and ICT,

India’s success has been phenomenal to

come in the frontline, yet it is not at the

number one position. Reason- India has

been able to produce great developers but

not good problem solvers (researchers)

and Architect. Only few leading E&R

Institutions have been able to produce

good researchers and technologists, yet

the efforts are needed to contribute in the

world class Computing & ICT Education

and relevant research. The IT Education in

India demands strong re-look the way is

being delivered. The subject’s relevance,

the accurate and detailed content, effective

delivery with proper balancing between

science, engineering and technology can

make the system more meaningful and

productive in current context. Can India be

Research Led Country in near future? The

answer lies how effectively we create the

right environment and encourage research

and its patenting. The researcher must

address holistically the science, engineering

and technology aspect. Today the solutions

are to be more fl exible, collaborative and

agile in nature. There is need for effective

customization to suit the requirement.

Further these solutions must address the

people at large for the cohesive growth.

E-Governance is one of the potential options.

E-Governance is the delivery of government

services and information to the public using

electronic medium. It is an effort to make

the government SMART (Simple, Moral,

Accountable, Responsive, and Transparent),

using Information and Communication

Technology (ICT). Further as a country

we must encourage the entrepreneurship

skill. 80% of institutions in the West,

entrepreneurship are institutionalized and

in India, there was a yawning gap. Very few

selective universities/institutes have an

entrepreneurial chair. In effect, the system

of education lacked “entrepreneurial” spirit

in general.

iGen has given pre-dominant

importance to discuss these above

mentioned enhancements and their

implication in research, education and

innovative & meaningful solutions. It will also

discuss how best we can leverage emerging

Information Technology advancements

to consolidate and continuously improve

India’s position to become a super power

to create Global impact. iGen presents the

economic scenario and the growth patterns

that are likely to fan out in the country against

the backdrop of emerging technologies

and empowered businesses from current

Architecture to future need, Impact of

social Media in our lives, inventive usage

of effective and newer solution architecture

and approaches, emerging trends of new

age devices to access solutions, leverage

the new 3G/4G connectivity options to

Connect with large audiences with wire

or wireless scenarios. The signifi cant

synergetic convergence impact will create

the true solution which not only helps

the society in general but also the rural

India in particular. – iGen addresses it all.

To critically address the above

mentioned areas the whole iGen concepts

decompose into multiple components

namely – Workshops, Technology Tracks,

Education and Research, E-Governance,

Paper presentation and Student Convention.

An enlighten list of national and international

speaker from leading industries, academia

and research organization will drive these

components to achieve the overall objective

of the convention. The Workshop provides

in-depth knowledge in four most upcoming

areas – namely – Cloud Computing,

Predictive Business, Mobile Technology

specifi cally the Android and 3G/4G

technologies. The technology Tracks

comprise of eight different and distinct

focuses of today and tomorrow’s need.

These tracks are namely – iArchitecture

with special focus on Cloud Computing,

iEnterprise – focuses on technologies and

the solution for enterprise and extended

enterprise with integration/middleware,

iSociety – focuses the IT enabled services

society at large for varied user groups

and for varied application scenarios.,

iEntrepreneur – create knowledge resource

for upcoming entrepreneur with real

practioners, iResearch – focuses on research

work going on in these said technologies

around the world. Applied research to

create innovative solutions for various

solution suited for the need of the country,

iExcellence – Champion’s Perspective - This

track will provide the platform to present

best three IT Award live project winner from

each of the fi ve categories to showcase

their work, iConnect- focuses primarily on

telecommunication technology including

3G/4G, device convergence, collaboration

and iSolution – focuses on various solution

frame work, middleware and approaches

to built solution of varied need . Each track

will be led by track chair(s) and have set

of eminent speakers to address various

aspects within the defi ned focus area. The

Education and Research event will address

the present scenarios, its lacuna and the

holistic methodology to take it to the next

level to meet the requirement of the future.

CSI has invited research papers for the

convention and few selected papers will be

presented during the convention. CSI the

only national society in IT for professional,

researchers and students feel the need to

educate and guide the students for their

excellence through Student Convention.

iGen gives a heads-up on what’s

practical today, and what’s most likely

tomorrow. Learn from special focus sessions

that provide a realistic perspective on future.

Listen to leading national and international

senior industry practioners, academicians

and Researchers deliberate on long-term

strategies for building a robust environment

for effi cient iGen deployment in alignment

with business and societal needs.

The Internet is clearly about more than sports scores and email now. It’s a place where we can conduct our democracy and get very large amounts of data to very large numbers of people.

- Frank James


CSI-Nihilent e-Governance Awards 2009-10Awards of Excellence

State Category Gujarat

Department Category Directorate of Settlement & Land Records – Goa

District Category Shahid Bhagat Singh Nagar, Punjab & Jhansi, UP (Joint Winners)

Project Category - G2C MP Online, MP

Project Category - G2G Integrated Finance & Forest Works Management,MP

Project Category - G2B e-Tax Administration – Kerala

Appreciation Awards

Department Category Sales Tax Department, Maharashtra

District Category Gwalior, MP

Project Category - G2C CHOICE, Chhattisgarh

Special Jury AwardsDepartment Category Department of Prisons, Goa

Project Category - G2G NCAOR, Goa - Ministry of Earth Sciences

Special Recognition Awards - Specifi c Areas

Public Distribution Department of Food & Civil Supplies, UP

Law & Judiciary Computerization of Himachal Pradesh Police, HP

Environment Gujarat Pollution Control Board, Gujarat

Research CSIR, Government of India

Piyush Gupta G P Sahu Ashok Agarwal & R K Bagga

Convener Co-convener Chairs, SIGeGov


1. Introduction

India is a country of 1.2 billion people, having 29

states, 6 union territories and 22 offi cial languages.

E-governance in such a big country is a challenging

task in itself. The main objective of E-governance is

to establish citizen centric transparent mechanism

to provide easy and reliable access of its services

to citizens and stakeholders [1]. This objective has

been articulated in the Vision Statement of National

e-governace plan “Make all Government services accessible to the

common man in his locality, through common service

delivery outlets, and ensure effi ciency, transparency, and

reliability of such services at affordable costs to realise the

basic needs of the common man”.

Presently, all the government departments are

creating their own infrastructure to deliver e-services

to the citizen by computerizing and automating their

offi ce procedures. This requires large investment

in the infrastructure, its maintenance and continual

upgradation, which leaves little time and money for

improvement in the delivery of e-services. It has been

reported that only 15% of the computing capacity in

most of the government departments is utilized. The

IT infrastructure created in this manner is too complex,

diffi cult to sustain and expensive which require better

management to bring down the costs.

Cloud computing is an emerging technology [2-6]

which can play a vital role in effective implementation

of e-governance at a lower cost. Today’s dynamic

environment of changing needs require on-demand

location independent computing services which include

software, platforms, and scalable infrastructure. The

cloud computing can provide such an environment

for optimum utilization of resources. It will minimize

the duplication of efforts through centralization and

standardization in ICT setup and reduce the overall

cost to a great extent. The energy requirement to run

cloud-based infrastructure is also signifi cantly lower as

compared to conventional IT set-up for e-governance,

making it environment friendly and green technology.

Cloud computing will also improve the information

sharing among different government agencies with

similar platforms being in use.

This paper systematically describes the

importance of e-governance and the role of cloud

computing in providing better services to the citizens

and stake holders. The world scenario of cloud

computing and initiatives taken by other countries are

briefl y summarized. In the last section of this paper, the

benefi ts of shifting e-governance applications to cloud

computing are discussed, primarily in Indian context.

ARTICLE

Cloud computing-Resource management for effective E-governanceSavita Bhatnagar

Scientist-D, National Informatics Centre, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Government

of India Email: [email protected]

The rapid progress in information technology and availability of telecommunication services at low cost has broadened the use of internet for multiple applications. Over the past few years, the government functioning has also evolved from person dependent manual work culture to an IT enabled intelligent system where the routine jobs are computerized and human intervention is required to bring in an improvement in the system. The government has recognized the potential of IT for improving the efficiency of its functioning, bringing transparency in the system and providing easy access of information and services to its citizens. Considering the diversity and size of our country, it is imperative to believe that such projects are big in nature and require huge infrastructure at multiple locations, which is expensive and require proper IT management. Cloud computing is expected to be an economically viable alternative to conventional methodology for implementation of e-governance projects, without compromising the quality of services. This article highlights the key features of cloud computing which are likely to play significant role in the Indian e-governance initiatives.


2. E-governanceTill few years back, the delivery of

services by various government departments

was slow and time consuming. This

scenario changed with the advancement

of technology and use of computers in

government departments. The Information

and communication technology (ICT) has

played a major role in bringing this paradigm

shift. Alongside, the rising awareness

among citizens about their rights, demand

for transparency in government functioning

and access to information has helped in

shaping the e-governance needs. E-governance is the application of

Information & communication Technology

(ICT) to provide and improve the

government services, transactions and

interactions with citizens, businesses, and

other arms of government. UNESCO defi nes

e-governance as [7]

“Governance refers to the exercise

of political, economic and administrative

authority in the management of country’s

affairs, including citizen’s articulation of their

interests and exercise of their legal rights and

obligations. E-governance may be understood

as the performance of this governance via the

electronic medium in order to facilitate an

effi cient, speedy and transparent process of

disseminating information to the public, and

other agencies, and for performing government

administration activities”

Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, former President

of India, has visualized e-governance in

Indian context to mean:

“A transparent smart e-governance with

seamless access, secure and authentic fl ow

of information crossing the interdepartmental

barrier and providing a fair and unbiased

services to the citizen.”

Types of E-governance

On the basis of interactions between

government and different stake holders as

shown in fi g. 1, the e-governance can be

divided into following groups

Government - to - Government (G2G):

Restructuring the government processes

and it’s functioning to increase the fl ow

of information and services within and

between various government institutions.

This interaction leads to a network of

all government offi ces and can be both

horizontal i.e. between different government

agencies and, vertical i.e. between national,

provincial and local government bodies.

The hexagonal cells in fi g. 1 represent

individual government department which

are networked to other departments.

Government - to - Business (G2B):

The interaction of government with various

businesses in term of policy enforcement,

contract management, procurement

of goods and services etc. It creates a

transparent business environment and

reduces operational cost. It also helps in

creating a business friendly government

which can react quickly to the needs of

enterprises under adverse conditions.

Government - to - Citizen (G2C): It

provides the interface between government

and citizens for effi cient delivery of large

range of public services, easy access to

information and participation of citizens

in government functioning. It makes the

government citizen-friendly.

Government - to - Employee (G2E):

Government is the biggest employer and like

any other organization it has to interact with

its employees and look after their welfare.

The G2B, G2C and G2E is a two way

communication process which require

government at its core and others as

benefi ciary on the periphery, as shown in

fi g. 1.

Fig.1: Type of interactions in e-governance

The Indian initiative

The Government of India has launched

the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP)

with the intent to support the growth of

e-governance within the country.

The government of India took a major

step towards adoption of e-governance

procedures by enacting “Information

Technology (IT) Act, 2000”. This act

provide legal framework to facilitate

electronic transactions and recognizes

electronic contracts, prevents computer

crimes, and make electronic fi ling possible.

The Act came into force on 17 October

2000 [8]. It constituted National Taskforce

for Information Technology and Software

Development. It also created center for

e-governance to act as a nodal agency

and provide general information on

e-governance, take national and international

initiatives, and formulate IT policies for use

by various central and state government

departments. At present, almost all the

government ministries and associated

departments have their institutional web

sites, which provide information to the

public regarding their objectives, policies

and decisions, contact persons etc. Within

the organizational structure also, the cause

of e-governance in being promoted through

automation and computerization of offi ce

procedures and adoption of electronic

mode of communication. A majority of

government projects and schemes require

inter government departmental cooperation

and data sharing for decision making.

Challenges with Traditional Infrastructure

In the present scenario, the

e-governance initiatives are taken by

organizations and government departments

in isolation and scattered pattern.

This model involves computerization

of departmental work, creation and

maintenance of infrastructure, access to

information for public through web site

and online applications etc. This model has

worked very well but lacks an integrated

approach towards e-governance. It is facing

the following challenges.

Duplication of data and efforts:

Information available with one department

is not easily accessible from the other

department. This is due to the lack of

standardization and uniformity in platform,

data and software. Instead of sharing the

data, departments go for creation of their

own data leading to duplication of work

and efforts. For example, issuance of birth

and death certifi cate, Ration card, passport,

driving license, voter’s identity card etc.

require collection of similar personalized

information from public. At present, this

work is carried out by individual government

departments, leading to duplication of

efforts and data.

Underutilization of resources:

The demand for Government to Citizen

Services varies from time to time. The ICT

infrastructure is created to coup up with the

maximum demand. In such cases, the high

capacity resources remain underutilized

for most of the time except short durations

when their availability is justifi able. In

addition, similar software solutions are

required by government departments for

their offi ce related work. Hosting these

software’s require huge investment in

paying license fee, setting up server and

desktop processing power for individual

employee, which remains underutilized. Scalability : Traditional Infrastructure

is not easy to scale. It requires certain

minimum time to upgrade the software and

hardware to meet additional requirements.

This process also leaves some of the

hardware and software redundant.

High maintenance : Government

department are spending a lot of money

on maintaining the ICT Infrastructure. This

includes the cost of annual maintenance,


uninterrupted power supply, air-conditioning

requirements and cost of manpower

deputed to manage ICT infrastructure.

Security: It is diffi cult to ensure

adequate physical security of computing

equipments and data centers in distributed

environment. Preventing unauthorized

access to ICT infrastructure is a challenging

task, including cyber attacks.

Disaster Recovery: Disaster recovery

need the data and applications to be

redundant at disaster recovery (DR) site so

that in case of any disaster at primary site,

the data and application can be accessed

from the DR Site on a short notice of time.

Maintaining DR is expensive in distributed

infrastructure and often given low priority.

Escalating energy consumption:

Requirement of power and cooling needs

for data centers is increasing day by day. It

has been reported that the cost of energy

consumption has gone up by 800 percent

since 1996 and increasing further [9].

3. Cloud computing

Cloud computing is a model generally

defi ned as the clusters of scalable and

virtualized resources like distributed

computers, storage, system software etc.

which makes use of internet to provide on-

demand services to the user. The National

Institute of Standards and Technology

(NIST) has described it as [10]

“Cloud computing is a model for enabling

convenient, on-demand network access to

a shared pool of confi gurable computing

resources that can be rapidly provisioned and

released with minimal management effort

or service provider interaction. This cloud

model promotes availability and is composed

of fi ve essential characteristics: on-demand

self-service, broad network access, resource

pooling, rapid elasticity, and measured

service.”

In cloud computing model user

requires the internet enabled devices like

desktop, smart phone etc to access the

cloud computing services. The service

provider is required to maintain various

computers, servers, data storage system

and high-speed network etc. to provide the

computing service, as shown in fi g. 2. There

are mainly three types of cloud services [11]

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS):

Computing resources like server, storage,

CPU, network etc. are provided as a service

on demand. Here, the consumer shares the

cloud infrastructure but does not manage

or controls it, making it appears like a

virtual machine to deploy and run arbitrary

software. He has limited control over

operating system, storage and deployed

applications.

Platform as a Service (Paas):

Computational resources via a platform

upon which applications and service can be

developed and hosted. Some of the standard

platforms are operating system, data base,

queuing services and middleware services

etc.

Software as a service (Saas): Provides

on demand use of application softwares

running on cloud infrastructure. For

example, Google docs is a kind of SaaS

provided through internet, wherein the user

can prepare documents without keeping

any code on the client machine.

There are three type of clouds namely

public, private and hybrid. When the cloud

is owned by a single organization for its

internal use, it is called a private cloud.

It is run by organization itself or can be

outsourced to third party. Public clouds

are owned by other organizations that can

provide the cloud services to many clients

using the same cloud resources. Hybrid

clouds are mix of private and public clouds

wherein an organization hosts the secure

and critical applications on private cloud and

not so critical information and processing on

public cloud.

Essential Features of the Cloud computing

On-demand self-service: A consumer

can access or use the cloud computing

services as and when needed without any

help or interaction with the cloud services

provider. Easy–to- use intuitive interface

enables him to select services as per

requirement. The web based email is one

such service.

Virtualization: It is an important

characteristic of the cloud. User accesses

the computing services without being aware

about the complexity of the infrastructure.

Virtual resources are assigned to the

services and need not to be bound to one

physical resource. Moving virtual resources

from one physical resource to another does

not affect the user.

Access from anywhere : Cloud

computing is a network based service. This

makes accessibility to the cloud services

location independent. The only prerequisite

is the use of standard internet-enabled

devices like low cost desktop computers,

mobile handsets etc at client side with high

speed network.

Resource pooling : The availability of

uninterrupted quality services at customer

site requires good planning and resource

management by the service provider. In

cloud computing, resources are pooled to

accomplish the demand of all the consumers

using a multi-tenant model, with different

physical and virtual resources dynamically

assigned and reassigned according to

consumer demand. Consumers use the

resources like storage, processing, memory,

network bandwidth, and virtual machines as

per their need.

Rapid elasticity : A consumer can

purchase computing power and other

available services as per need without

worrying about investing in additional

resources at site. The service provider on

the other hand can monitor the usage of

its resources in a dynamically changing

scenario. Additional resources can be added

or arranged in case of increase in demand

and similarly, scaled down or leased to third

party when not in use.

Measured Services : The usage of cloud

computing services is measurable. Based on

usage, Cloud services are controlled and

metered per client on daily, weekly, monthly,

and annual basis. This measurement is used

for billing, resource optimization, capacity

planning and other task by the service

provider. The consumers are charged on the

basis of actual usage of a combination of

computing services, bandwidth and storage

etc.

4. Cloud Computing for E-governance

Is it necessary to make use of

cloud computing for e-governance just

because it is one of the most talked about Fig.2: Cloud computing model


topic in computing or, does it have any

real advantage over other conventional

methods? Certainly, technological benefi ts

and cost advantage together make it an

attractive and viable technology. Cloud

computing is beginning to spread its roots

in government departments due to inbuilt

features like scalability, virtualization, rapid

elasticity, pay as per usages, on-demand

access to software, storage, network and

other platform services. The governments

across the world have understood

the importance of cloud computing in

e-governance and, many countries have

already taken a lead by rolling out plans to

use clouds for e-governance.

The analyst fi rm Gartner has predicted

that cloud computing will be the top most

technology area IT should concentrate in the

year 2010 [12]. Now many countries have

already started using cloud computing for

e-governance.

Japanese government has undertaken

a major initiative to bring all the government

ministries under cloud computing, known

as “Kasumigaseki cloud” [13] and is likely

to be completed by 2015.According to

Japan’s ministry of internal affairs and

communication (MIC), it will have benefi ts

like integrated and consolidated hardware,

shared platform services and security. It

will greatly reduce the government’s effort

in terms of electronic government-related

development work and operating cost.

The United Kingdom government

has considered creation of “G-Cloud”,

government wide cloud computing network,

a strategic priority. The Digital Britain

report prepared by Department of Business

Innovation and Skills and the Department

of Culture, Media and Sports outlined the

benefi ts of cloud and supported this national

initiative. According to UK government,

there are six initiatives under this plan such

as standardize and simplify the desktop;

standardize networks; rationalize data

center estate; deliver on open source, open

standards and reuse strategy; green IT; &

information security and assurance [14].

United States government has also

started efforts for shifting IT to the cloud

across the US federal government. This

includes efforts in the General services

Administration (GSA), National Aeronautics

and Space Administration (NASA),

Department of the Interior, Department

of Health and Human Services (HHS),

Census Bureau and White House. The Chief

Information Offi cer of United States of

America, Vivek Kundra believes that cloud

computing represents a “tectonic shift” in

computing. It requires in change of mindset

and operation. He has also predicted that

the “cloud will do for government what the

Internet did in 90’s [15].

The worldwide cloud based services

revenue is expected to grow with time,

as shown in fi g. 3 based on data reported

in Gartner study [16]. The Gartner has

predicted that by 2012, 20% of leading

cloud aggregators in the market will be

represented by India-centric IT services

companies [17].

Creation of National and State level

data centers, extension of high bandwidth

network connectivity up to block level,

national e-governance service delivery

gateway etc. are some of the major steps

taken in India towards the cloud computing.

India is a developing country with

limited resources at its disposal. Its vast

geographical expanse, economic disparity

among urban and rural population and

infrastructural problems make it essential

that the benefi ts of e-governance reach the

majority at affordable cost. The mode and

means of citizen-government interaction

should be attractive, easy to operate and

should not pose a mental block to its

people. A carefully planned cloud based

nationwide e-governance architecture, use

of cheap electronic gadgets for citizen-

government interaction, distributed but

centrally monitored data processing, and

use of powerful data mining techniques can

be crucial elements for the success of these

initiatives.

Benefi ts of Cloud computing for

Government

Cost Reduction: High capacity and

high computing power hardware at the

client site is replaced by cloud computing

based systems. It reduces the cost of capital

investment on one side and maintenance as

well as running cost on the other. Ideally,

an inexpensive computer with just enough

processing power to run an application

and connect to cloud system is required

at client site. Cloud turns the CapEx

(Capital expenditure) to OpEx (operating

expenditure). The government agencies can

access the computing services (storage,

platform, software, desktop PC etc) as per

their requirement. Infrastructure at remote

site minimizes the expenditure on software

licenses and power consumption.

Darrell M. West, Vice president and

Director of Governance studies at Brookings

has reported cost saving estimates from

various sources [18]. The cost saving

analysis based on his report is shown in

fi g. 4. A minumum 40% cost reduction is

estimated in almost all the cases.

Scalability on demand: In traditional

architecture, scaling involves procurement,

deployment and confi guration of hardware

and software according to changing needs,

which can be a time consuming process.

Government departments generally

create infrastructure to meet peak traffi c

requirement to avoid procurement

related delays. However, this leads to

the underutilization of resources in non-

peak period. For example, CBSE and

State boards declare their results online

and require fast resources for a limited

Fig. 3: Growth in cloud computing services revenue Fig. 4: Cost saving estimates


period of time. If created locally, they

remain largely underutilized. Similarly,

almost all the educational institutions in

the country required huge resources for

online admission procedure of students

for limited duration. Cloud computing

can meet the time varying demand and

provide an effi cient and low cost solution

to their requirement. The cloud computing

architecture is designed in such a way that

additional resources can be added any time.

Effectively, the size of cloud architecture

can be scaled up or down. Internally, the

resources are shared by user organizations

and their distribution is determined by

individuals need. This provides elasticity

within the system wherein the user always

gets his requirements fulfi lled.

Intelligent government : In

conventional mechanism of e-governance,

the data remains largely unutilized except

preparation of few departmental reports.

Cloud based e-governance model has

centrally monitored data centers containing

vital information about various government

departments. This includes the real time

and the historic data. Through data mining

techniques, huge amount of data centrally

available with the government can be used

to extract useful information for preparing

better government policies, defi ning long

term strategy and intelligent mechanism of

self correction.

As an example the “Right to Information

Act (RTI) of Government of India empowers

its citizens to seek information from

various government departments. It has

two major effects, bringing transparency

in the system and, strict adherence to

government guidelines so that individuals

do not suffer. The monitoring is largely done

by its citizen’s trough RTI. In the intelligent

form of e-governance, such an act can assist

government in monitoring and identifying

the loopholes in the system as a whole

thereby, providing it with a mechanism to

evolve policies for self correction.

High Availability and disaster

Management: Disaster is inevitable and it

is often unpredictable. It can be a natural

disaster such as earth quake, Typhoon,

fl ood, landslide etc or can be due to human

error like fi re etc. Any disaster leads to loss of

life and property. In e-governance, security

and safety of electronic data is of prime

importance. Disaster management involves

the off-site replication of data and system,

which is expensive. Retaining data and

transaction trail for long time is important

for certain departments. For example, land

records system has more than a century’s

worth of mutation information which is of

prime importance. Disaster management is

an integral part of cloud based architecture

which provides data protection and fault

tolerance to the client as part of its services.

Internally, cloud service providers replicate

their data at multiple locations, so loss of

one data centers due to any disaster does

not lead to loss of information for its client.

Easy to Implement: Implementation of

e-governance application at one location,

as in the case of cloud based architecture is

easier compared to similar application being

implemented at multiple sites. The later calls

upon need to have uniform infrastructure

at all sites which is expensive and may not

be available in certain instances, even if

available, it may lead to inconsistency due

to variation in versions of softwares.

Migration to new technology: In a

dynamic environment, the government

policies of various ministries change from

time to time requiring appropriate changes

in e-government applications. Sometimes it

may require migration to new technology.

In the distributed ICT setup, migration

is a challenging task which requires

implementation at site, often at multiple

locations. Comparatively, migration to new

technology is relatively easier and faster in

case of cloud based architecture because

changes at one location alone ensure

migration to new applications by its users.

Go green: Traditional infrastructure

require hundreds of personal computers,

a number of sophisticated servers,

printers, scanners, digitizers etc in a single

organization. It consumes electricity

during operation and also for maintaining

environmental conditions, at least in the

server rooms. The distributed ICT setup

in various government departments is not

good for the environment as we tend to

consume more and more natural resources

with time and, also generate harmful

gases. It also generates huge stockpile of

obsolete hardware waste that need to be

destroyed safely over the years. The cloud

computing architecture optimizes utilization

of resources thereby, ensuring lower

consumption of electricity, less emission of

harmful gases and lower stockpile of waste

hardware.

Benefi ts of Cloud computing for Citizen &

Business

Citizen centric: For achieving optimal

benefi ts of e-governance, a citizen-centric

approach to service delivery is essential. In

this approach, the focus is on the citizen and

the objective is to build a system that delivers

services, which fulfi ll citizens’ requirements.

The co-ordination and interoperability

among various government departments is

essential here. For this, cloud architecture

can have an important role by providing a

shared and common infrastructure to the

various government departments. A model

for future cloud computing based on citizen

centric e-governance architecture is shown

in fi g. 5.

Fig.5: Citizen centric e-governance

E-services at affordable cost:

Telecommunication revolution in India

has signifi cantly reduced telecom tariffs in

recent years and benefi ted its people due

to affordable costs. Internet has also gained

popularity due to these developments.

Availability of technology and ICT to citizens

for accessing the e-services at lower cost is

very important and a major challenge for

the success of e-governance in developing

country like India. Cloud computing reduces

the need of high capacity and high computing

power hardware at the citizen and business

site and makes them free from being tied to

desk top computers and specifi c geographic

locations. For example, some companies

have recently introduced cloud PCs and low

cost laptops. The use of cheap laptops and

widely used electronic devices like mobile

phones, smart phones, notebook etc. to

access computing power and e-services

can benefi t people. A wider reach of

e-governance through such practices will

ensure success of these initiatives.

Conclusion

On-demand self service, network

access, location independent resource

pooling, rapid elasticity and measured

services are some of the attractive features

of cloud computing for e-governance. The

latest developments in this fi eld indicate

that governments around the world will

make extensive use of this technology.

Cloud computing can shift the focus of

government department from infrastructure

setup and its maintenance to improving their

e-services. The citizen centric approach

of government will also bring it closer to

people.

It is generally debated that use of

cloud computing will cut down government

expenditure on e-governance. The author is

of the opinion that shifting of government

functioning to cloud computing will

have several long lasting benefi ts, both

for the government and its citizens. The

most important of all will be the two

way interaction between citizens and

government leading to an intelligent mode

of governance where better policies will


evolve out of this mutual interaction and

centralized processing.

References

1. Parminder Jeet Singh,

“Recommendation for Meaningful and

successful e-Governance in India”, June

2008. http://idl-bnc.idrc.ca/dspace/

bitstream/10625/41790/1/129466.

pdf

2. H. Gilbert Miller and John Veiga,

“Cloud computing: Will commodity

services benefi t users long term”, IEEE

IT Professional, pp 57-59, November/

December 2009.

3. Marios D. Dikaiakos, George Pallis,

Dimitrios Katsaros, Pankaj Mehra and

Athena Vakali, “Cloud computing,

Distributed internet computing for IT

and scientifi c research”, IEEE Internet

computing, pp 10-13, September/

October 2009

4. JohnViega, “Cloud computing and the

common man”, IEEE Computer, pp

106-108, August 2009.

5. Robert W. Lucky, “Cloud computing”,

IEEE Spectrum, pp 27, May 2009.

6. Michael Armbrust, Armando Fox, Rean

Griffi th, Anthony D. Joseph, Randy Katz,

Andy Konwinski, Gunho Lee, David

Patterson, Ariel Rabkin, Ion Stoica,

and Matii Zaharia, “Above the clouds:

A Berkeley view of cloud computing”,

http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/

TechRpts/2009/EECS-2009-28.pdf

7. http://portal .unesco.org/ci/en/

e v . p h p - U R L _ I D = 4 4 0 4 & U R L _

DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.

html

8. http://www.mit.gov.in/content/e-

governance

9. http://www.ibm.com/common/

ssi/fcgi-bin/ssialias?infotype=SA

&subtype=WH&appname=STGE_DI_

CC_USEN&htmlfi d=DIW03004USEN

&attachment=DIW03004USEN.PDF

10. http://www.princeton.edu/~ddix/

cloud-computing.html

11. Robert L. Grossman, “The case for

cloud computing”, IEEE IT Professional,

pp 23-27, March/April 2009.

12. http://www.cloudave.com/link/

gartner-says-cloud-computing-is-the-

top-technology-trend-in-2010

13. http://www.soumu.go. jp/main_

sosiki/joho_tsusin/eng/Releases/

Topics/pdf/090406_1.pdf

14. http://www.cloudbook.net/ukcloud-

gov

15. http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/

ng_20090422_7939.php

16. http://www.gartner.com/it/page.

jsp?id=920712

17. http://www.gartner.com/it/page.

jsp?id=1278413 18. http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/

Files/rc/papers/2010/0407_cloud_

computing_west/0407_cloud_computing_

west.pdf

27th CSI National Student ConventionOrganised by

CSI ITM Student Branch & CSI Gwalior ChapterHosted by

ITM Universe, GwaliorAnnouncement and fi rst call for papers

Aims and Objectives :

As he world readies itself for the second wave of Information & Communication Technology, industry and society are preparing to embrace a technology that is more penetrative, more inclusive, more enhancing than anything we have seen. To meet the challenge of incorporating these new technologies in India, ITM Universe has the privilege of hosting the 27th National Student Convention, which will be held from 9th to 12th March, 2011. Researchers, Business executives, Entgrepreneurs and Students from across the Country will get unprecedented opportunities to share a platform, to discuss and future trends in Technology.

Dates : March 09 - 12, 2011 Venue : Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya Seminar Hall, VSB Block

Key Features :

Technical Paper Presentation, Student Events, Workshops, Expert Lectures (Bilingual - English & Hindi)

Themes and suggestions for the convention are invited from all CSI members with an objective of

development and deployment of technology for social cause.

The contribution and suggestions may please be mailed to:[email protected], [email protected]

For latest updates and more details please visit : www.itmuniverse.in/csi11/27csinsc.html

ITM Universe Campus - Opp. Sithouli Railway Station, NH-75, Jhansi Road, Gwalior, Tel.: 0751-2432977 Ext.223


A decade ago, Internet came to town...and

changed our lives forever. It changed the way we

communicated, the way be marketed and the way

we interacted with information. Web 2.0 is the like

the second coming of the Internet...and it is going

to change our lives once again, and have more far-

reaching implications than we could ever imagine. If

Web 1.0 was driven by the PC and the worldwide web,

Web 2.0 will be driven by Social Networking Sites

(SNS) and the proliferation of smart phones.

Social Media Will Increase Honesty Quotient

One huge shift that we see on account of social

networking sites, will be an overall shift towards more

honesty in general human behaviour. In the good old

times, when we lived in villages, it was diffi cult for

someone to cheat another person....simply because

everyone knew everyone. In a megapolis like Mumbai,

where neighbours are strangers, it is very easy to get

away with fraud and deceit. But Social Networks are

again making us a village ...where lot of people know a

lot of people...and that is going to force more discipline

and honesty.

In any society there will be honest people and there will

be dishonest people. If we do a plot of honesty levels on

the x-axis and number of people on the y-axis. We will

see a bell curve emerge. Extreme ends of the bell curve

will represent very honest people and very dishonest

people. It is our contention that the middle portion of

the bell curve will move more towards honesty...thanks

to SNS.

Here is an example to substantiate our argument :

Fudging of resumes is known to be routine

practice. Besides fudging names of places where one

has worked and the duration of work, candidates also

routinely keep 3-4 “versions” of their resume ready.

Depending on the job opening, a particular version is

put out. Hence a person will have one version of the

resume which brings him out as a branding expert

(to be used for Brand Manager openings) while there

is another version which talks about his expertise in

setting up sales and distribution networks (to be used

for VP-sales kind of openings). Now both of these are

actually 2 different job profi les which require 2 different

sets of experiences and skills. Now with something like

LinkedIn, the “fl exibility” of having multiple versions of

“myself” is lost...there has to be one and only one me!

I need to be on LinkedIn (that is where people will fi nd

me) and I need to be myself (else I will get caught).

24x7xEverywhere

Once upon a time life used to be 8x5 ...eight hours

a day for 5 days a week. For some it would be 8x6, 9x6

or some such combination.

Then Internet came along...and life became

24x7. Internet gurus taught us how our ecommerce

store could continue ringing in revenues even while

we slept...and with 24x7 revenues, came the need for

24x7 customer service. On the other hand, our bosses

gave us laptops with data cards...and we became

24x7 corporate slaves. The concept of time changed

completely. It was no longer neatly bracketed into silos

(time to work, time to play, time to sleep, and time to

do nothing) ... it became one long line...with anything

happening anytime.

We warned; all this is set to change, again. For

good or for worse we don’t know, but it is going to

change be sure. This is how:

� If I need to get my Dell laptop repaired, I need to

either look up their manual for a 1.800 number

so that I can call them, or I need to logon to their

website, pull out a custserv email id and write

them a mail, or I need to fi ll in a form on their

website giving details of the complaint. Right? ...

Wrong! No need to do this anymore!

� Now all you need to do is logon to twitter and

send out a tweet “Having problems with my

#Dell laptop. Need help”. Chances are that a Dell

representative who is continuously monitoring

twitter for tweets with references to Dell, will

send you a @message offering help. Chances also

are that a Lenovo representative (who is tracking

competition) will also send you a @message

ARTICLE

Social Media Mega TrendsHareesh Tibrewala

Joint CEO, Social Wavelength, 604, Raikar Chambers, Station Road, Govandi (E), Mumbai 400088, India


“Blogger, Wordpress, YouTube,

DailyMotion, Twitter, Digg,

Delicious, StumbleUpon, MySpace,

Facebook, LinkedIn, Orkut.....there

are tools and there are tools. Some

may just be the fl avor of the day.

What is not a fad is people’s

participation in Social Media... that

ishere to stay.. and GROW.”

- Social Wavelength Wisdom

Nugget


offering help, even though you are Dell

customer (hoping that Lenovo scores

some brownie points with you for

helping you out).

The point is that as a consumer, I no

longer need a “defi nitive” address (phone

number, email id, website URL etc.) to

reach out to a brand. I can just tweet into

cyberspace (even without knowing Dells

twitter handle). It is like standing on top of

my building’s roof and shouting that I am

a Dell customer and I need help... and my

expectation is that Dell will hear me and

respond!

Social Media will create a huge jump

in consumers’ expectations of service levels

from a brand. He no longer needs to reach

out to the brand. It is his expectation that

he can just shout out anytime and from

anyplace... and that the onus of listening to

him and seeking him out lies on the brand.

Brands now need to be truly omnipresent.

Welcome to the new reality: 24x7x

Everywhere.

Changing Role of a Brand Manager

Once upon a time, not so long ago,

brand managers sat in ivory towers and

commanded ad agencies at their disposal

to go forth and conquer the market. Armed

with massive buying power, agencies

would unleash a communication wave on

the consumer. Totally brainwashed by this

“awesome” power, the consumer would

meekly submit and faithfully pick up the

brand from the store shelves. Average

products backed by money power had

a better chance of success than good

products with limited budgets. Marketing

was not about creating good products but

about brainwashing the consumer into

submission.

Not so any more. Social Media is going

to democratise the market place with the

power shifting from the brand owner to

the consumer of the brand. After all, in

classical marketing parlance, a brand is

what “the consumer makes it out to be”!

Here are some of the signifi cant shifts that

we foresee, both within the organisation and

in the market place:

� The walls that separate customer

service, sales, marketing and branding

will disappear. Once upon a time

“a customer-service” problem was

exactly that, the problem of “a

customer”. Today, one dissatisfi ed

customer can group other dissatisfi ed

customers on a social networking site

and cause considerable damage to a

brands reputation. A customer service

problem is no longer a case to be dealt

in isolation; it can snowball into a brand

reputation issue.

� In the era of mass communication, the

brand manager decided the brands

positioning. In a world powered by

Social Media, consumers will decide the

brands positioning. Brand managers

will need to be attentive to consumer

chatter and use that information to

ascertain how the consumer is thinking

of his brand. He will have the choice

of accepting that positioning, or going

back and modifying the product, to try

to establish another positioning. Sheer

money power will not be enough to

establish a brands positioning.

� One of the most used cliché by a

CMO is “We make products that our

customers want”. Fact of life is that a

company actually makes products that

it knows how to make and hopes that

customers will want it. Social Media

will bring consumers closer to the

product creation cycle and products

will actually be made (either by

choice or perforce) which are closer to

consumer expectations.

� The role of brand manager will become

more like that of an air traffi c controller.

He will no longer be a “commander”.

He will be more like a “navigator”. With

his eyes fi rmly glued to the brand radar

he will be closely watching the currents

created on account of brand activities

(ATL, BTL, Digital marketing, Social

Media Marketing) as well customer

service issues, PR crises etc, happening

across the geographical spread of the

brand. And it will be his job to guide

the brand carefully through these

currents, trying to avoid turbulence

and air-pockets but at the same time

enhancing the impact of favourable

currents. This role will require 24x7

vigilance and ability to take very sharp

calls.

Hareesh is a bachelor of engineering from VJTI, University of Mumbai and a Master of Science from the University of Southern California,

USA. He has been trained in Business Strategy Planning at AKZO-Nobel, Germany. He started his career as a partner with IFCM Counsellors,

a human asset management company. In 1997, he co-founded Homeindia.com, one of India’s fi rst e-commerce sites. Hareesh is a serial

entrepreneur and Social Wavelength is his third such venture. Hareesh has also been a visiting faculty at the University of Mumbai. He

has been past President of the otary Club of Mumbai, Sea Pearl, as well as the founder & co-chairperson of the expert committee on

information technology at the Indian Merchants Chamber. Hareesh is an accomplished orator and has been invited to address national and

international conferences on subjects pertaining to branding, entrepreneurship and technology.

The above article has been excerpted from a white paper “Social Media MegaTrends”, authored by Hareesh Tibrewala, Jt. CEO Social

Wavelength. A free copy of the white paper can be downloaded from http://www.socialwavelength.com/white-papers.php.

Call for Volunteers to Serve on Editorial Boards of CSI PublicationsWith an objective of strengthening CSI Periodicals and other publication activities, the Computer Society

of India is inviting volunteer services of its senior members and ICT domain experts across India who

have keen interests in taking up editorial assignments at various levels. The distinguished members with

proven research and publication credentials will be considered for positions such as Hon. Chief Editors,

Associate Editors and Members of Editorial Boards based on the profi les and experience. The CSI Chapters and

members are requested to help identify such volunteers from the respective regions and organizations. The nominations

(including self-nominations) of volunteers may please sent to [email protected] on or before 10th December 2010.

About the Author

ers and

he nominations

er 2010.


Focusing on the challenges and issues for building

a new spectrum of human – computer interface

prevalent in Mobile Computing, this Divisional

Conference on Mobile Computing was organized

during 11-12, August 2010 at Chennai. DCMC-

2000 was organised by the Dept. of CSE & TIFAC

CORE at Velammal Engineering College, Chennai in

association with the Computer Society of India Div IV

on Communications & Chennai Chapter.

For the call for papers announcement made in

the month of Mar 2010, 57 papers were received and

based on a review process by a team comprising of

Dr. Subramanya Rao from CTS, Dr. Bhagya Veni from

College of Engineering, Guindy and Mr. Madhusudana

Rao of C-DAC Chennai, eight papers focusing on

the theme of the conference were short listed for

presentation. The selected papers were authored

by faculty members from institutions like College of

Engineering, Guindy, Pondicherry Engineering College,

Oxford College of Engineering , Bangalore etc. These

papers were presented during the conference in three

technical paper presentation sessions.

The inaugural session of the conference took place

on 11th Aug 2010. Mr. R. Srinivasan, CEO, OneView

Systems, Trivandruam and the past chairman of

CSI Trivandrum inaugurated the conference and

delivered the inaugural keynote address on the

topic “Network Aware Mobile Applications” and

highlighted the features of pervasive computing in

the domain of Network aware mobile applications.

Mr. H.R. Mohan, Chairman, Div IV, CSI released the

conference proceedings and spoke on the trends in

mobile computing and the need for conferences like

this to discuss and deliberate on the various issues.

About the Conference, Prof. B. Venkatalakshmi,

Chief Coordinator, TIFAC-CORE, VEC welcomed the

gathering and briefed on the conference.

Followed the inaugural keynote address, Mr.

V. S. Raghunathan, Sr. technical Director, National

Informatics Center, in his talk, explained the various

mobile user interfaces and interaction models. In

the afternoon session, Prof. Dr. Ramarao from SRM

University enriched the audience with an exposure of

millimeter wave’s impact on Sensor Networks.

The second day of DCMC-2910 started with a

technical talk in which Mr. T. S. Rangarajan, Principal

Consultant, TCS, informed the participants about

Future Store based on RFID Systems. In the panel

session, the panelists, Mr. S. Ramanathan, RVP-7,

CSI, Mr. Madhusudana Rao of C-DAC Chennai, and

Dr. Subramaniya Rao from CTS debated on whether

Personal Computers will be replaced with Handheld

Mobile Devices.

During the valedictory session, the CSI Regional

Vice President Mr. S Ramanathan, addressed the

gathering and distributed the certifi cate of participation.

The two days sessions of the conference provided

an overview and helped the faculty and students to

visualize the future real time mobile applications.

About 30 faculty members from various institutions

and about 40 students from the college were benefi ted

out of this conference as participants.

A REPORT

Report on Divisional Conference on Mobile Computing (DCMC-2010)Report prepared by Prof. B. Venkatalakshmi, Chief Coordinator, TIFAC-CORE, VEC &

Mr. H R Mohan, Chairman, Div IV, CSI.


NCCSE-2011 aims to provide participants with an

opportunity to experience the latest trends in the area of

Computational Science and Engineering. Eminent speakers

from well known academic/industry/ research institutions

have graciously consented to deliver keynote addresses.

Further, NCCSE-2011 will be a forum for research scholars

from different parts of the country and provide an opportunity

to present and share their novel research ideas, in relation

to the conference theme areas .We invite scholarly original

research papers for presentation in NCCSE-2011. The papers

should be sent in IEEE format (both in doc and pdf fi le formats)

by 30th Dec 2010.

The theme areas of the conference include, but not

limited to, the following:

Algorithms; Artifi cial Intelligence; Software Engineering;

Distributed System; Bioinformatics and Computational

Biology; High Performance Computing; Computational

Intelligence; Signal and Image Processing; Information

Retrieval; Knowledge Data Engineering; Computer Graphics;

Virtual Reality; Multimedia; Computer Networks; Neural

Networks; Computer Security; Pattern Recognition; Computer

Vision; Programming Languages; Robotics and Automation;

Security & Cryptography; Data Compression; Data Mining;

Data Warehousing

Theoretical Computer Science

The conference proceedings will be published by Rajagiri

College of Social Sciences with the ISBN 978-81-907044-1-

0. The papers may pl. be sent to Ms. Jaya Vijayan at the Email:

[email protected] / [email protected] by

30th Dec 2010.

Registration fee: Rs. 1000/- for Academicians /

Professionals and Rs. 500/- for Students

For additional details, pl contact: Dr. P. X. Joseph,

Conference Convener, Prof. & HOD, Department of

Computer Science, Rajagiri College of Social Sciences. Rajagiri

P.O, Kalamassery, Cochin - 683104, Kerala, India. Phone: Ph:

0484- 2555564, Email: [email protected] or visit the

website at: www.rajagiri.edu

Contacts:

Ms. Mini Ulanat Mr. S P Soman Mr. H R Mohan Dr. P X JosephConf. Coordinator Chairman, Cochin Chapter Chairman, Div. II Conference Convener

[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

CALL FOR PAPERS & PARTICIPATION

NCCSE-2011Second National Conference on Computational Science and Engineering – 4-5, February, 2011Organized by Dept. of Computer Science & CSI Student Branch Rajagiri College of Social Sciences, Cochin

In association with Computer Society of India, Div. IV on Communications and Cochin Chapter

At the outset, on the request of huge number of authors, it

is clarifi ed that the Last Date for Paper Submission is 30th

November, 2010, even if the extended abstract has not been

submitted in advance. Submission of Extended Abstract was

not a pre-condition to submit full paper.

It gives us immense pleasure to inform you that encouraged

by the resounding success met with the previous editions of

INDIAComs since its inception in 2007, we hereby announce

INDIACom-2011; 5th National Conference on “Computing For

Nation Development” during 10th - 11th March, 2011 jointly

with Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Delhi, IEEE

Computer Society Delhi Section, ISTE Delhi Section, IETE

Delhi Centre, JJ Tibrewala University, Rajasthan and BVP

CSI Students’ Branch. It will be followed by NSC-2011; 4th

National Students’ Convention on 12th March, 2011, on the

same theme.

The INDIACom-2011 will feature regular paper presentation

sessions, invited talks, key note addresses, panel discussions

and poster exhibitions.

Like previous editions of Conference Proceedings, for

INDIACom-2011 also, we will publish the refereed Pre-

Conference Proceedings (with ISSN and ISBN serials), both

Hard and Soft Copies.

It is to further inform you that out of the papers being presented

in INDIACom-2011, best papers from each track having scored

04 or more points on a 05 points scale, will be considered for

publication in the bi-annual BVICAM’s International Journal

of Information Technology (BIJIT) having ISSN 0973 - 5658.

We hereby issue CALL FOR PAPERS for INDIACom-2011 and

NSC-2011. Like earlier, let us together make this event a mega

event of the country. Pl. note to submit the papers (Abstract

as well as Full paper) in proper template, which is available on

the website under download section.

Please note that like previous years, this year also, the paper

submission procedure is online. All the authors need to fi rst

register (which is Free), if not already registered so far, at

our website www.bvicam.ac.in/indiacom and then submit

the paper online at the same site. Detailed guidelines and

Registration procedure is available at our website.

For registration, you have to click on Membership. After

obtaining the Membership, you have to click on Submit Paper.

The soft copies of the information brochure and registration

forms can be downloaded from our website http://www.

bvicam.ac.in/indiacom/Downloads.asp.

You are requested to kindly give it wide publicity among

the peer professionals, staff members and students of your

organization. Please feel free to contact us for further details

at [email protected].

Important dates are as under:-

Submission of

Full Paper

30.11.2010 Paper Acceptance

Notifi cation

11.12.2010

Other details may be obtained from our portal at www.

bvicam.ac.in/indiacom.

INDIACom - 20115th National Conference on “Computing For Nation Development”During 10th - 11th March, 2011 and NSC - 2011; 4th National Students’ Convention on 12th March, 2011.


SIG REPORT

SIG on e-Governance for the year 2009-2010Report by - Dr Ashok Agarwal (upto 15 June 2010), Maj. Gen. R K Bagga (after 15 June 2010),

Convenor [http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/csi-sig-egov]

a) Publications

All publications of SIGeGOV are available online (www.csisigegov.org) including

¬ eGovernance Case Studies Edited by Dr Ashok Agarwal

¬ Compendium of eGovernance Initiatives in India Part I & Part II Edited by Dr. R K Bagga & Piyush Gupta

¬ Transforming Government - E-governance Initiatives in India – Edited by Dr. R K Bagga & Piyush Gupta

¬ Critical Issues on eGovernance a document based on Issue Process based Methodology was created and shared with all stake holdets

. This has been put up on the web site: www.csi-sigegov.org

b) Seminars /Conferences/Lectures

a. Knowledge Sharing Summit held from 5 to 6 June 2010 at Hyderabad.

b. 4th International Conference on eGovernance (ICEG) 28-29 April held at IIM, Bangalore.

c. Knowledge Sharing Summit held from 5 to 6 June 2010 at Bhopal.

Full reports published in CSI Communications as well as major International and National publications including CTO Forum, 2010.

c) Education/Research

¬ Curriculum Development on e-Governance: A core course structure was created for offering an elective at various institutions. This

was also shared with CSI HO and other institutions.

(Team: Mr. Mohan Datar coordinated the efforts and Prof. Nityesh Bhatt, Prof. DVR. Vithal, Prof. M P Gupta, Dr. VP. Gulati, Prof. ML. Sai

Kumar; Mr. Piyush Gupta and Dr Ashok Agarwal)

Computer Society of India

AGM NoticeThe 46th Annual General Meeting of the Computer Society of India will be held at 02.30 p.m. on Thursday

25th November, 2010 at Hotel Taj Lands End, Bandra, Mumbai.

A G E N D A

Item 1 : To Confi rm the minutes of the 45th Annual General Meeting held on 9th October, 2009 at VITS,

Hotel, Balewadi, Pune.

Item 2 : To receive and adopt the Annual Report for the Financial Year 2009-10.

Item 3 : To receive and adopt the Audited Accounts for the Financial year 2009-10.

Item 4 : To Appoint the Auditors for FY 2010-11 and to fi x their remuneration.

Item 5 : To ratify the establishment of Student Branches approved during year 2009-10.

Item 6 : To consider and approve the incorporation of a separate Society or Section 25 Company for publication

of CSI Transactions on ICT

Item 7 : Any other business with the permission of the Chair.

H R Vishwakarma

Hon. Secretary, CSI October 28, 2010


The SEARCC International School’s Software competition 2010 (ISSC 2010) was held at RMD Engineering

College, Chennai between 22nd October and 24th October 2010. Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan (ROC)

were represented by one team each whereas India & Sri Lanka deputed two teams for the Competition. Mr Yasa

Karunaratne, Secretary General, SEARCC was the chief guest at the event.

The following team took complete responsibility for organizing and conducting the fi nal competitions:

Event Chair - Dr. R. M. Suresh, Vice Principal, RMD Engineering College, (Vice Chairman, Chennai Chapter)

Organizing Chair - Mr. S. Ramasamy, Past Chairman CSI Chennai Chapter and Tamil Nadu State Students’

Coordinator

Programme Chair - Prof. P Kumar, Dept of IT, Rajalakshmi Engineering College & Hon. Secretary, Chennai Chapter

Complete hosting by way of transportation, accommodation and boarding were provided by RMD Engineering

College. To ensure cultural integration across teams, a site seeing trip to Marina beach, for all the team members

and chaperons was organised on 22nd October 2010.

The trial competition was held on 23rd October 2010 where all the 7 teams participated. All the participating

teams had a very good learning experience at the trial competition. The fi nals started at 9.30 a.m. on 24th October

2010 and lasted for two hours as scheduled. Software displaying minute to minute position of all the teams was

very handy for review by the participants and their anxious chaperons. This time CSI had provided the services of a

Chinese translator for the Taiwan team. Dr. O.S. Srivastava, Vallabh Vidhya Nagar, Dr. Rajasekhar R Kurra, Principal,

K.L. College of Engineering, Vaddeswaram, A.P. and Mr. H R Mohan – Chairman, Div. IV were the judges. The judges

were assisted by Mr Bhuvaneswaran, Rajalakshmi Engineering College. The following teams secured positions as

below:

Team Rank

Taiwan (ROC) First

Sri Lanka Second

New Zealand* Third

* New Zealand, India – A and India-B all had the same total score and were tied for the third position. Judges resolved

the tie as per the rules, in favour of New Zealand.

The awards function was organised on 24th October 2010 evening. Mr. Yasa Karunaratne, Secretary General,

SEARCC, Prof. P. Thrimurthy, President, CSI, the organisers, the judges and all team members with their chaperons

and managers attended. The FC Kohli Challenge Trophy and SEARCC Rolling Trophy were given away to the Taiwan

team. The second prize was given away to Sri Lanka while the third prize went to New Zealand. Mr Yasa gave away

the above prizes and addressed the gathering. He thanked India and Prof Thrimurthy for readily hosting the 2010

event.

Prof. Thrimurthy gave away participation certifi cates to all other students and honoured the chaperons with mementos.

The president also honoured the judges, organizing team and the RMD Engineering College management and staff.

In his address, he emphasized the importance of adherence to the spirit of the competitions and thanked the hosts,

organizers and visiting dignitaries that included Dr T.V. Gopal, Chair-Division II and Dr Sakthivel, Chairman, CSI

Chennai Chapter. He also honoured RMK group of Institutions and Rajalakshmi Engineering College with Flexi-board

certifi cations for their support. Compliments were also paid to M/S Polaris Software Lab, our Silver sponsors of

National competitions.

Dr. R M Suresh spoke at length on behalf of RMD Engineering College and proposed the vote of thanks. He also

distributed mementos from the college to each and everyone, who was a part of the event. The function came to a

conclusion with the National Anthem.

A report on SEARCC International Schools’ Software Competition (ISSC) 2010Report prepared by Wg. Cmdr. Murugesan, Director [Education], CSI

A REPORT


About the convention:

Technological advancements in IT in the past decade

have proven to contribute to nation’s development. With

the recent debacle of IT all over the world, a technological

advancement is needed along with the consideration of

social issues. Techno-progressivism for Renaissance of

IT sector in India marks the beginning of a new era of

development. This will turn out to be a colossal affair

where many native intellectuals can participate. The

CSI has understood the need for motivating the young

intellectuals throughout the country regarding their

pivotal role towards the renaissance of IT. This is a step

for budding intellectuals to bloom a brighter tomorrow.

The State Student Convention (SSC-10) gives the

opportunity to interact with other students from all over

the state and thus share ideas and gain technological

awareness.

The major domains under the convention are:

1. Soft Computing

2. Data mining

3. Swarm Intelligence

4. Grid Computing

5. Cloud Computing

6. Web Technologies

7. Advances in Networks & Security

8. Any other contemporary technologies

Features of the Convention:

1. Paper presentation

2. Poster presentation

3. Robotics

4. Video about Technology

5. Spot Events-

Open mind: Finish a set of tasks using open

source software and Sudoku

6. Dream Big- Present Innovative ideas about

technology.

7. Project demo

Registration Details:

All engineering, MCA and MBA students can participate

NON-CSI members : Rs.300

CSI members : Rs.200

The amount should be paid in the form of Cash/DD in

favor of CSI AP state student convention -2010

Each paper/poster can have a maximum of 3 authors.

Every author has to register separately.

Registration fee includes Convention lunch and kit.

Note : Limited accommodation available on advance

request.

Important dates:

Submission of full papers/ : Nov 15th, 2010.

poster/project synopsis/

Dream Big

Intimation of Confi rmation : Nov 25th, 2010.

Last Date of Registration : Nov 30th, 2010.

Convention Date : 10-11th December 2010

Venue :

Anil Neerukonda Institute of Technology and Sciences

Sangivalasa - 531 162, Bheemunipatnam Mandal,

Visakhapatnam Dt.

For details regarding registration contact

• K Bhargav Reddy – 09703172138

• V Sarva Rayudu – 09030678858

• V Venu Madhavan – 09494573035


Website: www.anits.edu.in/ssc10

1st AP State Students CSI Convention10th and 11th December, 2010

Organized by CSI Visakhapatnam Chapter

Hosted by Department of CSE, IT, & MCA, Anil Neerukonda Institute of Technology and Sciences, Visakhapatnam

(Affl iated to AU, Approved by AICTE & Accredited by NBA)

Theme: “Technoprogressivism for Renaissance of IT in India”

CALL FOR PAPERS

CSI Apex CommitteeChairman : Shri Umesh Chandra

Director (Operations), Vizag Steel.

Vice Chairman : Shri A P Choudhary

Director (Projects), Vizag Steel

Secretary : Shri Paramata Satyanarayana

Sr Manager (IT), Vizag Steel

Treasurer: Shri C K Padhi

AGM(IT), Vizag Steel

Organizing Committee:Chairman: Prof. V S R K Prasad

principal, ANITS

Conveners: Prof. S C Satapathy

H.O.D, C.S.E, ANITS.

Prof. Ch. Suresh

HOD, IT, ANITS.

Co- Convener: Mrs. Ch. Sita Kameshwari

HOD, MCA, ANITS

Program Committee: Chairman: Dr. K. Thammireddy

HOD, CSE, VIGNAN

Convener: Shri B Tirimula Rao

ANITS

Co- Convener: Shri M. James Stephen

IT, ANITS

Members: Shri Soumya Ranjan Mishra

CSE, ANITS


A two-day workshop was organized by the Department

of Computer Science and Information Technology,

Sagar Institute of Research & Technology, Bhopal,

on above topic in collaboration with CSI, CSI Bhopal

Chapter, CSI student branches and industries NETLINK

and ISC software. It was attended by students of

computer science having done one semester course on

Software Engineering.

Inaugural Session

At the inaugural session, Mr. A.N. Singh, retired IG

Police, MP Govt and Chairman Board of Governors,

Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, Bhopal

was the Chief Guest. He shared his views for extensive

use of computers in Police Department, especially for

crime detection and reduction. Software used for the

purpose should be very sound and fool proof and hence

testing is very important for such critical software.

The Guest of Honour, Dr. R.P. Singh, Director Maulana

Azad National Institute of Technology, Bhopal and

present Chairman, CSI Bhopal Chapter, spoke about

the role of bodies like CSI and IETE in nation building by

way of providing skill training to youths in the areas that

are not included in their curriculum but needed by the

industry. This will enhance employability of students.

The Special Guest, Shri Puneet Sharma, Vice President

NETLINK described global scenario of software

industry and said that the bad phase is almost over. He

said that many jobs are likely to come up in the industry

and emphasized that software developer and software

tester as a career are equally rewarding.

The Sagar Group of Institutions, Chairman Er. Sanjeev

Agrawal welcomed all the guests and participants

of the workshop on the campus of SGI. He said that

the workshop will be very useful to students as three

experts from the industry will guide them.

Dr. M. Kumar, workshop convener briefed about the

workshop and thanked students for overwhelming

response as 180 students from 26 engineering colleges

of Bhopal registered in the workshop. The vote of thanks

were proposed by Ms Megha Kamble, HOD, CSE, SIRT.

Technical Session

The workshop was divided in six sessions and experts

from Industry and Academics guided the participants.

First Industry Session

Mr. Sandesh Shetty, Manager Software Quality

Assurance of NETLINK software told participants

about SDLC and how quality is looked into at each

stage. He spoke about various testing tools used in his

organization and briefl y explained how to use them. He

also explained the test automation of test cases based

on risk analysis. He made the session interactive and

answered large number of queries of students.

Second Industry Session

Mr. Puneet Sharma, Vice President, NETLINK software

spoke about global scenario of the software industry

Workshop on “Software Testing – Tools and Practices in Industry”, October 8-9, 2010A report prepared by workshop convener Dr. M Kumar, Prof & Dean, Computer Science, SIRT,Bhopal

A REPORT

1

2

3

1. (LtoR) Dr. S H Agrawal, Dr. R P Singh, Er. Sanjeev Agrawal, Mr. A N Singh, Mr. Puneet Sharma, Dr. S C Bhageria, Dr. M. Kumar

2. Mr. A N Singh, Chief Guest addressing the gathering

3. Mr. Puneet Sharma, Vice President NetLINK addressing the gathering


in general and told students that the recession is slowly improving

and new jobs are forthcoming for good students. He emphasized on

understanding business processes as they are the key for producing

good quality software. He also talked about business intelligence

through Data Warehouse and its testing.

Third Industry Session

Mr. Vikas Sidhwani, Software Quality Assurance Manager, ISC

Software, Pvt. Ltd, Bhopal told students how SQA is applied in his

industry. He also emphasized role of CMM/SEI in assuring quality.

He also told students about several testing tools that are being used

in his software development company at different stages of SDLC.

The session was very interactive for students and they clarifi ed many

myths about software testing.

First Academic Session

Dr. M. Kumar, Professor and Dean Computer Science and

Engineering, SIRT, Bhopal spoke on Website testing, He explained

that Website testing is different than the testing of conventional

software due to obvious differences of Web-applications like short

release cycles, constantly changing technologies, possible huge

number of users, inability to control user running environment, 24

hours availability of Websites. Thus, our testing efforts must focus

on the following: functionality, usability, navigation, forms and page

content. He explained how test cases should be generated in each

of above and what are various open source software available for

testing. He demonstrated how link testing should be performed using

some of the open source software. He also highlighted how database

testing should be performed.

Second and Third Academic Sessions

Two sessions were taken by Dr. Deepak Tomar, Associate Professor

of Computer Science and Engineering, Maulana Azad National

Institute of Technology, Bhopal. He discussed various issues of cyber

security and website security. He told about various log fi les where

user’s data is stored on the server and if these fi les can be secured

then cyber crimes can be prevented. He emphasized that there is a

need to secure user’s data whenever it is sent through some URL

as it is completely visible. One way could be to encrypt the user

information. The session was completely interactive and students

learnt many things about cyber security and website security.

Valedictory Function

The Valedictory function began with the welcome address by Dr. S.C.

Bhageria, Director of SIRT, Bhopal. He expressed his satisfaction over

excellent conduct of workshop.

The convener of workshop Dr M Kumar presented two- day

workshop report detailing out the resource persons who made

their presentation on the assigned date and topic. He expressed his

gratitude to the Directors of 26 institutes of Bhopal who sent their

participants for the workshop.

Dr. Anshul Kumar, Global CEO, NETLINK Software, the Chief Guest

of the function, expressed his satisfaction the way workshop was

conducted and hoped that the deliberations enriched knowledge

of students. He further said that such workshop/seminars should

be regular feature as students get chance to interact with industry

persons who are involved in software testing/development. He

distributed certifi cates to the participants.

The vote of thanks were proposed by Ms Ritu Shrivastava, HOD, IT,

SIRTS.

Jayshree Dhere is a software consultant, an IT

security professional and an ISO27001 Lead

Auditor. She has worked in software technology

and information systems areas. She has carried

out various information systems audit &

assurance assignments for companies in BFSI

and manufacturing sectors and helped companies implement

information security policies and procedures commensurate

with ISO27001. She has played roles in different capacities in

conducting a variety of software projects in India and abroad.

She has worked on various platforms ranging from mainframe

computers to e-business infrastructures such as dot net and Java.

She has also been instrumental in helping organisations achieve

capability maturity levels as per CMMI standards. She brings with

her an experience of over 24 years.

Jayshree has also been involved in teaching assignments. She

was involved in courses conducted by BITS Pilani to teach

subjects like Computer Networks, Object-Oriented Analysis &

Design and Software Architectures to M.S. (Software Technology

and Telecommunication) aspirants, from renowned software

companies like Patni Computer Systems and Tech Mahindra. She

has also conducted corporate training in areas of software process

and agile methods. She was involved in technology upgrade

program for senior managers of a renowned software company.

She is currently teaching ‘IT Strategy and Business Dynamics of IT

Industry’ to management students of Mumbai University.

She has been a managing committee member of ISACA, Mumbai

Chapter for 6 years. During this tenure she handled various

portfolios such as CISA Coordinator, Newsletter Editor, Web

Master and Membership Director. She wrote various articles on

subjects such as ‘Enterprise Architecture’, ‘Critical Chain Project

Management’, ‘Service Oriented Architecture’, ‘IT Strategy’ etc.

She also contributed to ‘Computer Interface’ column of BCAS

Journal (Bombay Chartered Accountants Society Journal) for

2 years. Her paper on ‘Women and Information Security’ was

read in the international conference of TWOWS (Third World

Organization for Women in Science) in 2005. She is a life member

of CSI since 1986.

Jayshree did her master’s degree in Physics with distinction and

pursued her post-graduation in Software Technology from NCST

(National Centre for Software Technology, Mumbai). She won

the Comstruct award in software technology for her rank-holding

performance. She is also a Certifi ed Information Systems Auditor

(CISA) from ISACA, USA.

Mrs. Jayshree Ashok Dhere

Welcome to Resident Editor for CSI Communications


About IC-CANA 2011:

“IC-CANA” is a forum for the presentation of Technological advances and research results in the fi elds of Computer

Architecture, Networking and Applications. IC-CANA 2011 will bring together leading engineers and scientists in

Computer Architecture, Network Technology and Application domains from around the world.

Benefi ts of the Conference include:

Keep up-to-date on the latest advances in the fi eld, present your research within a unique forum, Collaborate with

experts from around the world.

Call for Papers:

Authors are requested to submit their original work in the areas of “Computer Architecture”, “Networking” and

“Applications Development”.

Formatting:

Each paper is limited to 5 pages normally. Additional pages will be charged. Please follow the IEEE two- column

format.

Formatting Instructions:

• 8.5” x 11”, Two-column format (Doc, Latex, pdf)

All selected papers will be published in the Conference Proceedings. Apart from this, the Best Papers will be

published in the fi rst issue of NMAMIT Annual Research Journal.

Papers need to be submitted to the following e-mail address: [email protected] or [email protected]

While sending the mail the subject line should be Paper Submission_ICCANA

Important Dates:

Full Paper Submission Deadline: November 30th 2010 (extended date)

Author Notifi cation: December 6th 2010 (extended date)

Author Registration: Before December 15, 2010

Final Camera-Ready & Copyright Form Submission: Before December 15, 2010

Pre conference Tutorial (3 parallel full day tutorials): January 7th 2011

Conference Date: January 8th 2011

For details contact:

Program Chair: Dr. Niranjan N Chiplunkar, CSI Division V (E&R) Chair: Dr. Swarnalatha R. Rao

For further details: See the Conference website www.iccana.com

Technical Sponsors Academic Sponsors Industry Sponsors

International Conference on Computer Architecture, Networking & Applications 7th & 8th Jan, 2011 at NMAMIT, India

Jointly organized by CSI-Division V(Education & Research) and NMAMIT, NITTE

CALL FOR PAPERS & PARTICIPATION


© 2009 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.*Source: IDC’s Business Value of Virtualization Research, 2008

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For more information or to place your orders, contact HP StorageWorks representative at [email protected]

ExecCom Transacts


1. Calls for Participation: The CSI Chapters and Student Branches

are requested to motivate members from the respective

regions/institutions to actively participate in the upcoming

national/international events such as: CSI-2010: 45th Annual

Convention (25-27 November, Mumbai), ITD-2010 (2-3

December, Bangalore), COMAD-2010 (8-10 December, Nagpur),

ConfER-2011 (23-24 January, Allahabad), CONSEG-2011 (17-19

February, Bangalore), EAIT-2011 (18-19, February, Kolkata), ISEC-

2011 (23-24 February, 27th NSC (9-12 March, Gwalior).

2. CSI Elections 2011-12/2011-13: There has been a concern about

inadequate turn out of members in the elections for last several

years, presumably communications not reaching them. In order

to ensure the correctness of the members’ contact details, the

HQ has deployed exclusive tele-callers for reaching out to the

members and updating the membership database. It is our

earnest request to all CSI voting members to cast their votes

as a matter their right and duty. The CSI objectives can be

realized only through active participation and collective wisdom

of its members in various programmes and organizational

development activities at the national, regional and chapter levels.

3. New Premises for Headquarters in Mumbai: In order to expand

CSI programmes and operations meeting the aspirations of the

members and stakeholder, a decision has been taken to acquire

new premises for CSI Headquarters in Mumbai. The new premises

of 507 Sq. Mtrs. Area for CSI HQ will be at Samruddhi Venture

Park, MIDC Building in Andheri, Mumbai. The locational advantage

is with respect to the proximity of ICT Sector organisations and

similar bodies like NASSCOM and Media Labs.

4. Proposal for CSI Research Institute: The CSI has been in the fore

front of promoting ICT Education and Research since its inception.

With the high-end research work and KPO opportunities coming

up rapidly, there is an urgent to augment the efforts of academia

and research organizations at the national level. With the above

back-drop, a committee has been constituted to prepare a

comprehensive proposal for CSI Research Institute. The proposal

shall especially include the aspects of sustainability and viability

of such an institute with a focus on long-term and strategic ICT

research needs.

5. Special Drive for Enrolling PG Scholars as CSI Associate

Members: With a view to create next-generation membership

base of CSI and mentor the young researchers, a special drive

for enrolling postgraduate scholars (include research scholars)

as CSI Associate member has been proposed across India. These

associate members and new college graduates joining CSI will

be assigned mentors from the vast pool of senior members of

CSI. These new members will also have an opportunity to work/

interact with the IFIP TC Representatives and Hon. Research

Directors nominated by the CSI President as well as join/form

CSI Special Interest Groups in emerging technological domains.

These members will also be encouraged to contribute technical

papers, articles, case studies and project outcomes in various CSI

Publications.

6. A Roadmap for CSI National/International Events: With an

objective of long-term planning and optimizing resources, a

roadmap for National/International events hosted/sponsored/

supported by CSI is under consideration. As such, the host

chapters have been identifi ed for several events e.g. CSI Annual

Conventions-2011 (Ahmedabad), 2012 (Kolkata), 2013 (New

Delhi) and 2014 (Hyderabad). The other tentative events/

hosts under consideration include: SEARCC-2011 (Mumbai),

COMNET-2011 (Udaipur), the 28th NSC (Goa), IFIP SEC 2013

(Bangalore), CONSEG-2013 (Indore).

7. Call for Proposals to Host Regional/Divisional/SIG Events:

The proposals are invited from the potential host chapters/

organizations to host Regional/Divisional/SIG events. The

regional and Divisional/SIG events are hosted to cater to the needs

of specifi c geographical regions and to disseminate technological

developments respectively. The expected outcomes of these

events will include publication of proceedings for academic/

research purposes, formation of special interest groups and task

forces, submission of recommendations to Government and

other policy making organizations. The proposals and specifi c

suggestions may please be sent to the respective RVPs/Divisional

Chairpersons/SIG Conveners. A few of CSI Chapters located in

large Indian states are exploring to host CSI State IT Conventions

to meet the state-specifi c needs.

8. Proposal for Recognizing CSI Student Branches: There have been

suggestions from members to harness the potential of CSI Student

Branches and Member Institutions on long-term and on-going

basis such as:

(i) Special Recognition and Visibility: Based on the

membership profi le and strength, the student

branches may be categorized appropriately as “A”,

”B”, “C” and “O” Student Branches and be listed on the CSI

website thus providing them special recognition and visibility.

The CSI Service awards may be considered for each category

of student branches similar to CSI Chapters.

(ii) Long-term and Strategic Relationship: The student branches

and member institutions having proven capabilities and

credentials may be considered for long-term and strategic

collaboration such as– CSI Education Provider, CSI

Research Centre and CSI Strategic Partner. The objective

of collaborations may encompass a broader spectrum and

meeting the national/regional needs of the society.

(iii) Career Guidance and Counselling: The student branches

desirous of establishing career guidance and counselling

cells on collaborative basis may be assisted in their efforts

enhancing employability. The project internships and in-plant

training opportunities may be provided by the prospective

employers and leading organizations through these cells.

There are also suggestions to revive/revitalize the efforts

towards conducting employability tests at various levels.

9. CSI Golden Jubilee: The professional societies such as CSI follow

a paradigm of Innovate-Associate-Resonate-Communicate cycle

for serving the members and larger interests of inclusive growth. It

is a matter of great pride that CSI has achieved several of the tasks

as envisaged by its founders and leaders. As we approach the

Golden Jubilee of CSI, the members across nation are requested to

share the achievements and contributions of CSI and its chapters,

student branches and members at large. The above contributions

will augment the on-going efforts of compiling the History of

Computing in India and Role of CSI.

10. Publication of Proceedings of CSI Events: An overwhelming

majority of members are for strengthening CSI Publications. While

there are hectic efforts towards the enhancing the productivity,

quality and reach of CSI periodicals, there is also strong need

to publish proceedings of CSI events. These proceedings are

an important source of information to academia and research

organizations apart from being the most important vehicle of

enhancing visibility of CSI and its programmes at the national/

international level. A few proposals have already been received

from members for such publications. There is also a suggestion

to publish CSI Research Digests twice in an academic year,

incorporating highlights and important outcomes of the CSI events

across the Nation.

Prof. H.R. Vishwakarma

Hon. Secretary, Computer Society of India


CCooiimmbatorree

Chapter NewsPlease check detailed news at:

http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/chapternews-november2010

SPEAKER(S) TOPIC AND GIST

AHMEDABAD

Prof. P. Thrimurthy, President, CSI

Mr. Pratap Jain, Mr. Bharat Patel and Mr. Nilesh Mody

(Offi ce bearers of the chapter)

25th July, 2010 : “Annual Convention of the Chapter”

This was organized to celebrate the occasion of 50th anniversary of Gujarat state

(Golden Jubilee Celebration ‘Swarnim Gujarat’)

ALLAHABAD

Mrs. Shailaja Gupta (Past Chairperson CSI Allahabad)

Mr. M. N. Tripathi, M/s ITI Limited, Naini, Allahabad

M N Tripathi, Manager ITI Naini unit, Allahabad, presenting the

Lecture

10th October, 2010 : “Telecom Scenario in India”

Mrs. Gupta spoke about current and future telecom market, about mobile

communication, and 3G services and also introduced the topic of Next Generation

Network. Regulatory issues involved in NGN were also touched upon.

Mr. Tripathi gave detailed presentation on Optical communication technology

such as Pulse Code Modulation, PDH, SDH and DWDM. Optical communication

media properties, parameters such as polarized mode and chromatic dispersion,

optical power budget were also explained.

COIMBATORE

Mr. M K Anand and Mr. K Gangadharan, Directors,

Maptech Infosoft, Chennai.

8th Sep.2010 : “Use of IT: Effi ciency vs Effectiveness”

DEHRADUN

Mr. Vivekananda Venugopal, Vice President & General

Manager, Hitachi Data System

Dehradun : Chief Guest ED-HOI (KDMIPE, ONGC) inaugurating

the IT Quest Track-1 (Inter School Quiz Competition 2010)

Two track four session- parallel event “Storage Solution for Cloud Computing”

The speaker delivered a technology presentation on storage solution for Cloud

Computing, one of the emerging technologies, which is going to change the

technological landscape of all organizations.

RANCHI

Inter School IT Quiz Competition in pgoress.

26th Aug. 2010 to 4th Sep. 2010 and 21st Sep. 2010 to 30th Sep. 2010. :

“Training Courses of AutoCAD”

These were held for executives of MECON Ltd.

1st Oct. 2010 to 3rd Oct. 2010 : “Inter School IT Quiz Competition”

The quiz was conducted in two categories – Senior and Junior students of Class

XI & XII were in Senior while students of Class VIII to X were in Junior Category.

SRIJI – ONGOLE

Mrs. G Jyothi, Mrs. U. Koumudi, Ms. A. Bindu and Miss.

B. Madhavi

Mrs. G. Jyothi explaining the features of SaaS

4th Sep. 2010 : “Software as a Service”

The seminar focused on all the benefi ts of implementing software as a service

(SaaS) based applications in recession scenario.

TIRUCHIRAPALLI

Mr. S Venkata-subramanian, Associate Professor,

M/s Saranathan College of Engg., Tiriuchirapalli

Speaker Mr. S Venkatasubramanian delivering the lecture on

Tecnologies at Software Industries

24th Aug. 2010 : “Technologies at Software Industries ”

The IT industry uses various modern state-of-art technologies for the development

of software. For developing software with quality, the industry must use a process.

Now-a-days the industry mostly uses agile software development methodology,

whereby the software can be developed more quickly without compromising the

quality. There are several agile methodologies available such as Scrum, Feature

driven development, extreme programming, etc., and industry can choose one

according to the one that suits the best.

Regarding the coding technologies, two major technologies such as dotnet

and J2EE are playing the centre stage. Both technologies can be used for the

enterprise application development. A comparison of the two technologies was

also discussed in the lecture.

Also, an outline about web2.0 and cloud computing paradigms was discussed to

give an insight to the audience about how a budding entrepreneur can start an IT

fi rm without any big personal investment by using cloud services.

UDAIPUR

Dr Martin Howarth, Head of Department Engineering

and Mathematics, Sheffi eld Hallam University, U.K.

26th – 28th Oct. 2010 : Workshop on Networked Mobile Wireless Robotics

“Robotics and Automation”

The speaker gave the keynote speech on technologies and various projects on

Robotics and automation like Distributed Human-Robot System for Chemical

Incident Management. He said a large nanotechnology research programme on

Nanorobotics - technologies for simultaneous multidimensional imaging and

manipulation of nano-objects is going on in Howarth, Sheffi eld Hallam University.

The integration of different technologies to act as simultaneous real-time nanoscale

“eyes” and “hands”, including the advanced nanorobotics, high-resolution ion/

electron microscopy, image processing/vision control and sophisticated sensors,

will lead to the ability to manipulate matter at the scale of atoms or molecules.

The Nanorobotics programme will thus allow unique experiments to be carried

out on the manipulation and observation of the smallest quantities of materials,

including research into nanoscale electronic, magnetic and electromechanical

devices, manipulation of fullerenes and nanoparticles, nanoscale friction and

wear, biomaterials, and systems for carrying out quantum information processing.

“Robotic System Safeguards Employees’ Health”

The speaker informed that the automation and robotic system enable human-

beings to execute work in very dangerous places and they also preserve their

health. According to him, there are extreme temperature sites in which man

cannot work but a robot can do so. The creation of these technologies not

only secures the quality of services and fi nished products, but also ensures the

quality of workers’ living standards. Dr. Hawarth says the aim is to develop

automated systems to a level where operator stress is reduced at the same time

as productivity is lifted.

Dr. S S Rathore, Chairman, IEI, ULC “Robot Miners of the Future”

Advanced robotics is making many mining jobs more effi cient and less dangerous

said the speaker. Mining robotics is tipped to have wide application, particularly in

the automation of potentially dangerous work such as rock-breaking, rock-bolting

in unstable geology and hole-drilling and charging. Automation, mining companies

are hoping their machines will run more effi ciently and with less downtime.

Dr. Martin Hawarth, Sheffi eld Hallam University, U.K. “Robotic System Safeguards Employees’ Health”

The speaker informed that the automation and robotic system enable human-

beings to execute work in very dangerous places and they also preserve their

health. According to him, there are extreme temperature sites in which man

cannot work but a robot can do so. The creation of these technologies not

only secures the quality of services and fi nished products, but also ensures the

quality of workers’ living standards. Dr. Hawarth says the aim is to develop

automated systems to a level where operator stress is reduced at the same time

as productivity is lifted.

Dr. S S Rathore, Chairman, IEI, ULC “Robot Miners of the Future”

Advanced robotics is making many mining jobs more effi cient and less dangerous

said the speaker. Mining robotics is tipped to have wide application, particularly in

the automation of potentially dangerous work such as rock-breaking, rock-bolting

in unstable geology and hole-drilling and charging. Automation, mining companies

are hoping their machines will run more effi ciently and with less downtime.

Entire new continents can emerge from the ocean in the time it takes for a Web page to show up on your screen. Contrary to what you may have heard, the Internet does not operate at the speed of light; it operates at the speed of the Department of Motor Vehicles.

- Dave Barry, Dave Barry in Cyberspace

The ‘Net is a waste of time, and that’s exactly what’s right about it.- William Gibson


Published by Suchit Gogwekar for Computer Society of India at 122, TV Indl. Estate, S K Ahire Marg, Worli, Mumbai-400 030 • Tel.: 022-249 34776

and Website : www.csi-india.org • Email : [email protected] and printed by him at GP Offset Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai 400 059.

Licenced to Registered with Registrar of News Papers If undelivered return to :

Post Without Prepayment for India - RNI 31668/78 CSI, 122, TV Indl. Estate,

MR/TECH/WPP 241/WEST/09-11 Regd. No. MH/MR/WEST-76-2009-11 Mumbai - 400 030

Student BranchesPlease check detailed news at:

http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/chapternews-november2010

SPEAKER(S) TOPIC AND GIST

DIMAT, REGION IV SIRT, BHOPAL

8th to 10th Oct.2010 :

3-days workshop on Robotics.

Staff and resource persons from the VLSI & Embedded

Systems Lab of DIMAT and from Mechanical, EEE/ETC

& CSE/IT/MCA Departments

Robotic Workshop in progress

8th and 9th Oct. 2010:

Workshop on “SOFTWARE TESTING – TOOLS AND PRACTICES IN INDUSTRY”

A detailed report on this Workshop may please be found elsewhere in this issue.

UPES, DEHRADUN

Mr. Vinod K. Taneja

Lighting of Lamp during the Inauguration (L to R) Mr. Vinay Avasthi,

Mr. Vinod Kumar Taneja, DGM NIC, Prof. G C Tiwari, Pro Vice

Chancellor, UPES, Prof. Durgesh Pant, Mr. Polash Bora

1st Oct. 2010 :

Inauguration of student branch was organized at the University of Petroleum &

Energy Studies, Dehradun.

The speaker addressed the students and emphasized the role of CSI in career

building of students. There was also a presentation given by him on “Cloud

Computing”, which enhanced the knowledge of students on the topic.

Later a quiz competition “TRIPOD” was conducted.

Counsellors of Student Branches are requested to immediately update their records with

Wg Cdr M MurugesanDirector-Education, Computer Society of India, National Headquarters, CIT Campus, 4th Cross Road, Taramani, Chennai 600113

Ph: +91-44-2254 1102/1103/2874; Fax: +91-44-2254 1143. e-mail: [email protected]. Web: www.csi-india.org

Please note that reports from the Student Branches without the approval of the CSI Director-Education will not be published.

– Gopal T V, Honorary Chief Editor

for details contact - csi indiacsi-india.org/communications/csic nov 2010.pdf · for details...

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